Appetite for podcasts grows

Our appetite for podcasts is steadily growing, if the latest report on podcasting trends in the USA for 2021 is anything to go by.

Weekly downloads of podcasts in the US have increased by 45% in the past year.

The State of Podcasting white paper from Authentic – a Podtrac company – asked how big is podcasting, and is it worth our time? Here’s what it found:

Today there are over 1 million podcasts registered with Apple Podcasts.

41% of Americans (that’s 116 million people) aged 12 and over listen to a podcast in any given month. That’s up from 37% in 2020.

80 million Americans listen to podcasts each week.

In the early days of podcasting, the audience was limited to so-called techie types, primarily males in higher income brackets. As the content available has become more diverse, so too has the audience.

Slightly more men than women listen to podcasts. Overall, the audience is made up of 51% male, 46% female and 3% non-binary/other.

At least half are highly educated and relatively young.

By far the majority of podcast listening (62%) happens on an Apple platform, and people are listening the go, with 88% using a mobile device.

With over 1 million podcasts available today, the majority of them have monthly average downloads of less than 5,000.

But a the top end, the largest podcast has monthly downloads of more than 10 million.