Podcast Listenership Increasing Rapidly

Posted: August 29th, 2008 | By: Steve Mullen | Filed under: Podcasts, Social Media News | No Comments

For those who think podcast listening is leveling off … think again. According to Pew Internet Research (hat tip to Podcasting News for alerting me to the story), the total number of people who have ever downloaded a podcast increased by 58% in the last two years — from 12% of the population to 19%. And, the number of daily podcast downloaders increased from 1% to 3%. Podcasting News points out the obvious, that the adoption of this technology has been slow, but steady:

While the number of dedicated podcast fans is up 300%, the technology’s steady adoption rate is closer to something like RSS’s, rather than the rocket-fast adoption of something like YouTube, which has a much lower barrier to entry.

This is great news to podcast producers who are chasing hard-to-find advertising dollars. The study also said there doesn’t appear to be a difference in the gender of daily downloaders.

One interesting note is that this study only addressed those who time shift, or download podcasts to listen later. It did not quantify those who listen to audio presentations and podcasts online. If you added that population, the number of podcast listeners would likely be much higher.

Plug alert: If you’re interested in using podcasting to promote your business, please check out BizPodz, the podcast production service from EndGame Public Relations!

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