Podcasts-“One’s own Radio Station”- have grown in popularity globally.
According to emarketer.com, the US is the leader in podcast listenership in 2021 with a monthly podcast
listener population of 117.8 million people -40% of US internet users. The other countries that followed
in sequential order of podcast listenership rankings were Sweden, Norway, Australia, Canada, and Spain.
According to PwC’s Global Entertainment & Media Outlook 2018-2022, podcast ad revenues will grow at
a 29.7% CAGR to $1.6 billion in 2022 (consulting.us). This growth of podcast revenue won’t necessarily bite into radio ad revenues.
The growth has been a decade in the making.
“The (podcast) industry has only been around for about a decade, but in the last three or four years it’s really started maturing ..” – Oren Rosenbaum, Head of Emerging Platforms at United Talent Agency (UTA)
Podcasters are now becoming internet stars similar to YouTube stars. The world’s No.1 podcaster is a
popular comedian, Joe Rogan, with US$30 million revenues in Y2019. Secondly, Karen Kilgariff and
Georgia Hardstark’s My Favorite Murder (US$ 15 Mn) followed by Dave Ramsey’s finance advice podcast
“The Dave Ramsey Show” ($ 10 Million), Dax Shepard’s “Armchair Expert” ($ 9 Mn), and Bill Simmons’ “The Bill Simmons Podcast” ($ 7 Million).
Why are podcasts so popular?
Unlike videos and streaming, Podcasts do not consume high internet data usage –they are ‘bandwidth
friendly.” This makes it a powerful channel of access to low income internet users and geographies where internet signals are weak.
This unrivalled advantage is a factor that forcefully pushes podcasts to the forefront of content creation.
Another key factor is the Pandemic-rather the pandemic driven social isolation. When people are lonely, one-to-one content channels such as Podcasts become a great companion that they begin to long for.
Podcasts empower anyone with a basic smartphone to record their audio in any language and distribute
it via a podcast platform or through their own digital channels-at almost no cost. Reading and viewing
content needs someone’s full attention and span of such attention is ever becoming shorter. Unlike
these channels, podcasts can be consumed while engaging in another activity-say, driving. Due to this
characteristic of the possibility of the passive engagement, unlike other content, podcasts are much
more likely to be consumed in their entirety unlike print and visual content which could be interrupted and consumption becomes suddenly discontinued.
Radio too, gives us the same passive listening opportunity similar to Podcasts. What does a podcast offer that the Radio cannot offer?
Podcasts, in comparison to Radio, offers the on-demand flexibility that the Radio does not have. Often, if you have not listened “live” to the Radio, you have missed the broadcast. Podcasts on the other hand
can be readily downloadable on demand and be played thousands of times by the listener.
Next we can examine the podcast industry outlook closer to home.
(To be continued)
