Free platforms can exist mainly to inflate a headline number
Quote
And the thing that makes sense to me now is that anchor as a podcast platform exists only to increase Spotify as in a huge number.
Episode 89: Poll Juice (episode page, opens in a new tab) 00:14:21 (play audio from this timestamp, opens in a new tab)
Voice-matched
Summary
After Spotify's investor day claimed 4 million podcasts (most on Anchor), Dave says you can find garbage feeds in 30 seconds, like a keyboard-mash title with a single one-second episode. His conclusion: Anchor exists to make Spotify's number huge. Podcast Index counts only about 1.8 million feeds that meet its quality criteria.