iHeart To Bring Full-Length Video Podcasts To iHeartRadio At No Cost To Creators – Unlike Other Platforms.

iHeartMedia is deepening its “Creators First” strategy with plans to add full-length video podcast distribution to iHeartRadio — at no cost to creators — a move the company says is designed to expand reach without compromising creative or financial control.

Beginning early this year, podcasters will be able to distribute full-length video versions of their shows directly into both the app and web versions of iHeartRadio, alongside traditional audio episodes. Creators will upload video episodes through their existing RSS feeds, allowing for seamless distribution across iHeartRadio, which remains the nation’s largest digital radio service and a major podcast platform.

The expansion is built around three core principles: creative integrity, monetization autonomy, and control over hosting. Creators will determine how their content appears on the platform — whether audio-only, video, or both — while retaining ownership of their work.

“While audio remains the backbone of the podcast medium, as well as its primary source of audience connection and the reason for the industry’s explosive growth, video podcasting is now emerging as a completely separate and incremental form to audio,” said iHeartMedia CEO Bob Pittman. “In the same way podcasting evolved as a new layer on top of broadcast radio, video is becoming an additional layer for creators.”

Pittman emphasized in the announcement that iHeart’s approach is intentionally aligned with the economics that built podcasting. “At iHeartMedia, creators come first,” he said. “Providing this new video distribution capability for free to our creators is an additional testament to our continuing focus on creators’ success and is consistent with how and why the podcast industry was built to begin with.”

Creators have been concerned that with video podcasts, platforms like YouTube and Spotify are taking creators’ revenue -- usually between 40-50% of their revenue on the platform -- unlike audio podcasts. However, iHeart will carry video podcasts for free, as they do with audio podcasts. 

“As content has become more popular and podcast creators have become true stars, we’ve seen a natural trend: creative audio content is becoming more valuable to more platforms,” said Conal Byrne, CEO of the iHeartMedia Digital Audio Group. “When you have some of the best creators in the world making some of their best content in podcasting, that’s going to drive other content types too — like video.”

Byrne said iHeart’s scale gives creators a way to navigate an increasingly complex podcast ecosystem without sacrificing independence. “As the No. 1 podcast publisher, iHeart provides the scale, credibility and expertise required to help creators grow and retain their audience,” he said. “That now includes video — because that’s what our creators want, deserve and should expect.”

The use of RSS to bring video episodes to iHeartRadio could also allow other podcast listening apps to also begin supporting video in the coming year, especially as more consumers look for that option.

Even so, a study commissioned by Cumulus Media and Signal Hill Insights and conducted in October by Quantilope, found audio still rules. It shows 92% of weekly podcast listeners say they listened to podcasts in the last week, while 8% say they exclusively watched podcasts. Three in four respondents say they both listened and watched, with 17% exclusively listening to audio episodes. The findings are consistent with those of the prior seven studies conducted since 2022, with listeners steady at 91% while the “watch only” segment averaging 9%.