The amount of hours spent listening to podcasts worldwide is growing - and this rise is eating into the time spent listening to music streaming services.  According to Tim Ingham, writing in Rolling Stone, the main music streaming services are happy to let this happen and to channel more of our attention into podcasts. The reason? Spotify founder Daniel Elk clarified that when people play music on their service, they have to pay out royalties; when people play podcasts on their service, they do not. So the more that people play podcasts instead of music, the more money they’ll ultimately retain. Thus even though music demands less attention than podcasts and is still growing short-term, the long-term trend may be towards the latter.