Podcast audiences Competing for attention
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The 20,000 Foot View: 2020 was a big year for podcasts, with increased investment, M&A activity and industry moves. Audiences grew too, but still lag behind in hype and expectation, and a portion of this growth has come at the direct expense of music streaming and radio. Podcasts are helping drive an audio renaissance, but one in which the benefits are not evenly distributed.
Key insights
- Apple’s Podcasts+ indicates that the podcasts sector nearing an inflection point, ready build from its early adopter
- Podcast user is stable, registering in 2020, adoption peaking among year olds and dropping to for teens for year olds
- Spotify remains platform consumers are most likely go to for podcasts, used of podcast users. Apple saw rate fall from in 2020 in 2020
- Spotify had podcast listeners in 2020 but lags and annual podcast advertising fell from in 2019 to 2020
- Podcast audiences still relatively weakly engaged: just podcast monthly active users listen compared to for music streaming for radio
- Similarly, podcast mostly only engage with a small number of shows – to one to two shows week and just listen to than two
- More than third of music streaming and weekly active users report listening more audio overall because of but more than a quarter each are listening to less radio and less music because podcasts
- Podcast content is successful now may not reflective of what will find as the podcast audience becomes mainstream
Companies and brands mentioned in this report: Amazon, Apple, Google, Podcasts+, Spotify, Sveriges Radio, Warner Music Group, Wondery