By
almost any metric the number of people listening to podcasts continues to grow.
The chart on the left from the most recent Edison Research Share of Ear study [link], shows the dramatic growth in daily
podcast listening since 2014. Daily podcast listening is becoming particularly
strong with folks in the ages 25-54 “money demo.”
[Scroll
down to see the latest Podtrac publisher rankings.]
Podcasts
continue to be perceived as hip and fashionable, though these anecdotes are hard to
quantify. Our company recently produced a series of podcasts for a research
center at the University of Minnesota. Telling friends and family "we produce
podcasts" increased our “coolness factor” by several percentage points.
In
this haze of glory, media observers keep asking where the podcast train is
going. Is podcasting a new ubiquitous
mass media platform? Will podcasts
someday achieve the audience reach of traditional media such as television and
radio?
We
explored these questions recently [link] when we discussed Mark Ramsey’s
assertion that (quoting Ramsey): “The path to
larger audiences is a path to more regular folks.”
Ramsey
believes that podcasts will have wider appeal if they cover more trendy topics
such as tweets by Roseanne Barr. We disagreed and cautioned that dumbing down podcast content
to reach the average Joe and Jenny ignores the reasons why podcasts are so
popular now – they are a deeper dive for people want to know more about
something.
WHY PEOPLE DON’T LISTEN
TO PODCASTS
It
is true that more people are subscribing, downloading and presumably listening
to more podcasts now than every before. Yet, listening to podcasts is done only by a
small subset of the general population. The most recent stats show that 20% to 25% of the general population listens to a podcast on a regular basis. Radio
reaches around 90% of the population each week.
Also
there are “podcast avoiders.” Jacobs Media surveyed over 60,000 radio listeners
earlier in 2018 and asked two “avoider” questions in Techsurvey 2018.
The
first question looked the percentage of the Techsurvey sample that said they
never listen to podcasts (see chart on the left).
According
to the Jacobs study 45% of the respondents said they don’t listen, down 3% from
the prior year.
Podcast avoiders are evenly split between men and women.
The
age of the respondent makes the biggest difference. Boomers and folks in the older Silent Generation
are the most likely to avoid listening to podcasts.
In
the second question, Jacobs asked why people don’t listen to podcasts. The most
frequent response (64%) from the respondent was I am not interested. It is hard
to unpack “not interested.” But some of the avoidance may be due what Mark Ramsey said earlier in this post, they dislike current podcast content.
Most
the reasons for not listening to podcasts were difficulties respondents said
they had problems accessing podcasts or finding them in the first place. This
seems to confirm notions by Steven Goldstein on his blog (called
Blogstein) in a post titled It's Still
Not So Easy To Listen To A Podcast [link].
 |
| Steven Goldstein |
Goldstein
said in his post:
“As podcasting grows,
there is a false narrative that the ease and usability of listening to podcasts
has been addressed and solved.
Indeed there have been
improvements in various apps, and the advent of smart speakers is exciting, but
many "average consumers" are still baffled with how to find and
listen to podcasts.”
To
make his point, Goldstein cited a YouTube video by the Godfather of Podcasting,
Ira Glass, from a couple of years ago promoting the then-new podcast series Serial.
What started out as a simple
explanation turned out to a complicated mess that perhaps underscores the
difficulty some period experience when trying tune-in a podcast for the first
time. You will get a chuckle out of
Ira’s video:
BIG GAINS FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES, PRX & APM IN THE MAY PODTRAC
RANKING TRENDS
Are
you better off today than you were a year ago? If you work developing and
marketing podcasts for The New York Times,
PRX or American Public Media (APM), you probably will say “Yes.”
Each
of these organizations saw major gains in their Unique Monthly Audience in May
2018 compared with May 2017. The Times
increased its audience by 59%, powered by the popularity of The Daily. APM also plays a role in The Daily’s success by providing a radio version of the podcast to its
affiliated stations. This partnership has become a wise move by both
organizations.
The
decline in Unique Monthly Audience for the three podcasts published by This American Life shows an important
factor in podcast's life cycle. There is an endless need for new stuff on the shelf.
People quickly get bored and the shelf-life for podcasts is often short.
Like
any product, the “new bell” is an important to way to attract audience.
It has been a while since This American
Life has rung the “new bell,” and their sagging numbers show it.
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