Podcast listening is rising. Some of this activity has been driven by increased smartphone usage but the use of home, smart speakers and internet radio technology has also been an important factor in driving this growth rate. Want to listen to something other than music and have only a few minutes available? Listen to a podcast might be the perfect answer.
In part, this is why people are turning more and more to listening to podcasts.
According to a recent report by Ubermetrics Technologies (Berlin) podcast growth in Europe, although slower than in the US, is expanding. In one of the blogs written by Ralf Rehkopf, he gives an insight into this expanding market:
” … In contrast, it’s taken European consumers much longer to adopt podcasts but, now, they are growing quickly in popularity – at least throughout Northern Europe. In Sweden, for example, podcast listening figures grew by about 36% in just two years and a total of 16% of Swedes listen to podcasts every week. Their French counterparts download an average of 17 podcasts and listen to 14 podcasts every month. In Germany, estimates state that about 15% of the population listen to a podcast at least once a week – up from only 7.5 million back in 2016…”
Although not all of the European podcast market is expanding at the same rate, overall, it is rising steadily.
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Colin Gray of The Podcast Host has put together a compilation of podcast statistics to try and make sense of podcast trends in 2020. In his report he writes that in the US, the number of people who have ever listened to a podcast has risen by 4%. When diving deeper into the monthly listening figures, the statistics also show that the highest rise, of 7%, was seen in the age range of 12-24. The UK saw a rise of 4% in the number of adults (aged 15+) who listened on a weekly basis.
Sources:
The Podcast Host
Infinite Dial
Rajar Midas Audio Report Spring 2020
MyPodcastReviews Stats Service
In July 2018, Search Engine Journal wrote that Google Trends (Google’s keyword tool) indicated that “a comparison of the word ‘podcast’ with ‘blog’ and ‘blogs’ shows that podcast is in an upward trend.” Also, that searches using the word ‘blog’ or ‘blogs’ were decreasing implying that searches for podcasts were increasing.
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