The Listening Landscape

Listen up: The podcast world is booming. With over 700,000 active podcasts, and 29 million podcast episodes, media companies around the world are scrambling to claim their stake in a terrain that is barely finding its stride. There are a multitude of problems to face: How can you be sure listeners will find you? How can you offer relevant ads that won’t turn people off? What will you do with all of this hard-fought content once its shelf life is outdated? The question of necessary monetization versus ethical accessibility will continue to be a head-scratcher. In order to stay relevant, savvy producers are going to have to rise to these challenges and innovate.

By Valentina Canavesio, Jo Roberts, and Eunice Chung

We wrapped up a collaboration with Fresh Air with Terry Gross, a nationally syndicated NPR program that is also one of the internet’s most listened-to podcasts. They came to us for many of the above issues. Since their inception, there has clearly been a seismic shift in listening patterns of their audience. With over 13,000 interviews in the hopper, a searchable and shareable archive were high on the list of priorities. According to Edison Research’s 2019 “Infinite Dial” report, the number of Americans ages 12+ who have ever listened to a podcast is 144 million, an increase of 20 million in just one year’s time. And in just the last month, 189 million Americans have tuned in to online audio (podcast and streaming radio included).

We worked with the Fresh Air team to research and explore new ways to engage existing listeners and reach a wider audience. We’re excited to share that the Fresh Air Archive was nominated for Best Website in the 24th Annual Webby Awards!

Here are some of our research findings around the role podcasts play, listening habits, and how people discover new shows.

How we listen

With the huge variety of podcasts available, listeners have plenty of options to choose from, going from mainstream shows to the most niche ones that match their unique interests. Regardless of their content, podcasts fall into three categories when it comes to the role they play in their listeners’ lives:

1. Entertainment

The first one is that of entertainer. These are shows that tend to mirror listeners’ TV consumption habits and may very well be supplementing those with conversations around the latest Bachelor episode or analysis of Survivor. In fact, “Companion podcasts,” as these are called, are extremely popular, running alongside episodic television programs. The popular true crime is a hugely popular category as well, with fans eagerly awaiting the next episode.

2. Education

For others, podcasts serve the role of educator. It’s a way to expand your knowledge around just about any subject and better yourself with limited investment. As one person we spoke with put it, “it’s a low-bar way to feel educated,” and in a more curated, and perhaps trustworthy, place than your Facebook’s feed may feel. For suburban and urban people alike, podcasts can offer peeks into worlds that listeners don’t happen to live in on a daily basis. And for parents who are looking for alternatives to screen time to occupy their kids, children’s podcasts are seen as a better alternative. Teachers, too, are turning to podcasting for a multitude of reasons. Podcasts aimed towards educators, such as Check This Out, help them keep up to date on the ever changing technologies in the classroom. Bringing the art of podcast creation into the classroom helps students strengthen writing, listening, speaking skills, and tech skills, across ages and levels.

3. Companionship

It’s no surprise that podcasts keeps us company. And last year, incredibly, the length of time people listened to their favorite audio was an average of nearly 17 hours per week. As more people work or live alone, that constant background voice can become a source of comfort, a companion that helps you structure your day as your routines become defined by certain content. Many native audiobook consumers, who have long found company in hours of narrated content, are mixing up their listening habits to incorporate podcasts. This companionship can help shape ones’ day, starting with the morning news and ending with narrative-format programs in the evening.

Audio habits

The evolution of our audio habits has changed dramatically, and will continue to do so as highly specific content continues to populate our playlists. People are filling their daily commutes with podcasts, often selecting content that matches the length of their trip. Podcasts also offer an opportunity to feel productive while doing other daily tasks, like cooking, cleaning, and even working out. The fact that most people are listening through their smartphones means that it’s always easy to move about from one space to another while still listening. Many listeners are also relying on their smart speakers to provide them with more bite-sized podcast content. These short bursts of entertainment are easier to commit to over the course of a regular day.

Discovery

With so many options and no barrier-to-entry, it’s hard to vet content. As a result, discovery of new podcasts is still mostly happening through word of mouth and editorially curated lists. Most podcast listening still happens in Apple Podcast, but Spotify is making a growing investments in podcast content (last year they committed to spending $500 million on new acquisitions in the podcast space, in addition to grabbing up specialty content studios like Gimlet, a tech-focused network, and Parcast, a true crime network). At the time of our project, Spotify was the second most popular place to listen to podcasts in the world. The combination of their listener data with their large library of shows will allow them to match listeners with new programs in the future.

The tech for podcasters continues to evolve as well, making their work easier to find across platforms. According to Tech Crunch, last year Google added playable podcasts to search results, Spotify released an analytics dashboard for podcasters, and Pandora launched a tool for podcasters to submit their shows.

Finally, YouTube may not be the first platform that comes to mind when people think about podcasts, however it is growing to become a major destination for audio and podcast listening. Podcast listeners are utilizing YouTube over Apple Podcasts and Spotify as a platform for podcast listening, especially when listening at home. Additionally, many podcast creators have been distributing their content on YouTube to meet a larger international audience. This allows them more flexibility with the content format, with numerous podcasters creating multiple channels serving different themes or lengths (full episode vs. shorter clips) in the hopes to attract diverse audiences through the platform’s algorithm.

Future of listening

The rise of podcasts coincides neatly along with a lot of other cultural shifts. People are living further and further away from where they grew up, working more gig jobs outside of 9–5 hours, and waiting longer to get married and start families. Audio is filling some of the needs that are created by these changes. Podcasts allow you to stay connected to a place no matter where you are. One expat we spoke with still listens to her local shows so she can stay informed about what’s going on. It will be interesting to see how podcast listening will evolve in the future. Will listening continue to be a one-sided relationship between individual listeners and hosts, or will it become a more communal experience? Will a few shows dominate, or will there continue to be more and more niche shows with smaller and smaller audiences?

If a podcast lives online but no one listens, is it still a podcast? What are your listening habits? What platforms do you use? What are your favorite shows? We’d love to hear about them in our comments!