The home-brewed audio programs known as "Podcasts" are catching on with people who own iPods or other digital-music players, according to a survey -- "29 percent of US adults who own a digital music player have downloaded a podcast, Pew Internet and American Life Project finds. That makes for 9 million podcast listeners. Nearly 50 percent of digital-music player owners younger than 29 years old have tried out podcasts, the survey found, compared with 20 percent of those 29 or older."
The global streaming industry has spent the better part of a decade chasing subscriber counts as the primary metric of success. That era is now formally over. New market data from Omdia confirms that the industry has crossed a decisive threshold; one that shifts the competitive playing field from growth-at-all-costs to monetization discipline. For senior executives navigating media, advertising, and technology strategy, the implications extend well beyond entertainment. A Historic Revenue Crossover Online video revenue increased 13.5 percent to $176 billion in 2025, while pay-TV revenue declined 4 percent to $170 billion; marking the first time in the industry's history that streaming has surpassed legacy pay-TV in revenue terms. This is not a rounding error or a statistical artifact; it represents the culmination of more than a decade of structural disruption to the traditional broadcast and cable TV model. Global subscriptions to online video services reached 2.24 billion by the ...