Competing sounds? Podcasting and popular music

Podcasts and popular music are different kinds of sonic media, but they are increasingly in direct competition for our listening time within the ‘audio market’. Audio platforms like Spotify, Apple and Google host both podcasts and music (and other audio media) so their distribution decisions and infrastructure have a significant impact on musicians, podcasters, record labels, podcast networks and other industrial entities. Despite this convergence, podcasting studies and popular music studies have not regularly been put in conversation; podcast studies has drawn primarily on radio studies, and overlap between this work and popular music studies has to date been minimal. Our introduction to this Special Issue on popular music and podcasts suggests that framing music and podcasts as ‘competing sounds’ permits new contributions to several important areas of media study, including platformization, creative labour, media representation and the role of sonic media in everyday life.