As awareness and usage has grown, so has consumption frequency. Data from a study conducted in early 2020 showed that 37 percent of the U.S. population reported to have listened to a podcast in the past month, more than three times the share recorded a decade earlier. Listening at home remains the most popular location for podcast consumption, and the majority of time spent listening occurs between 10am and 3pm.
Podcast listeners themselves are a diverse bunch, and according to a report held in the United States podcasting is growing the fastest among Millennials in minority ethnic groups. Between the third quarters of 2018 and 2019, the daily reach of podcasts among Hispanic and African American Millennials shot up by 135 percent and 50 percent respectively. Additionally, 65 percent of new podcast listeners in the United States were women and 30 percent were non-white.
When it comes to publishers, National Public Radio (NPR) is one of the leaders the United States, normally drawing in a unique monthly audience of over 20 million listeners. Using the reputation and influence from its massive U.S. based following, NPR also ranks among the top podcast publishers worldwide, accumulating hundreds of millions of unique streams and downloads each month. The success of NPR can be attributed mainly to its unique content; a number of its podcasts, such as NPR Politics Podcast, TED Radio Hour, Planet Money, and Fresh Air offer listeners a combination of entertainment and practical knowledge that has become popular among listeners. NPR competes with iHeartRadio for the top spot when it comes to listeners and downloads both in the United States and worldwide, with each publisher only very marginally outperforming the other month to month.
Podcasts can be a lucrative source of revenue for media companies, evidenced by iHeartMedia which filed for bankruptcy in 2018 and emerged with revenue of over 3.68 billion U.S. dollars at the end of the following year thanks to its digital and podcasting endeavors. Meanwhile, the format’s growing popularity and potential led music streaming giant Spotify to invest hundreds of millions of dollars on podcast-related acquisitions, including award-winning company Gimlet. Even retail behemoth Amazon is intending to get involved in the industry, paving the way for disruptions and competition in the market.
