Think about it like this: a lot of people commute to work.
They can listen to the radio, music, or podcasts. According to the New York Post, Americans spend an average of 35 minutes a day commuting—or, put another way, 19 full workdays every year. For some, the commute is even longer. While they can’t safely read while driving, they can listen.
What’s more, people aren’t just listening to podcasts during their daily commute. They’re listening while they make breakfast in the morning, while they clean the house, fold laundry, do yard work, or put the kids to bed.
Podcasts Are Popular (and Growing in Popularity)
Another good reason to join the podcasting community is the sheer popularity of podcasts. While you may have once thought podcasts were a fad, statistics prove otherwise.
The Statista Research Department reports that in 2006, only 22 percent of the adult population in the United States knew what the word podcast meant.
As of 2022, that number rose to 79 percent. They also estimate there are 86 million podcast listeners in the US, a number they expect to rise to over 100 million by the end of 2024.
Searchability is Improving
Historically, one major disadvantage of podcasting has been poor discoverability.
It was difficult to search for podcasts, leaving many podcasters creating content delivered to only a few listeners. As podcasting grows in popularity, big-name companies like Spotify and Google are combating this issue.
As of 2021, Google now indexes podcasts so they can be looked up in their free australian email leads engine and listened to directly on the search page. Recently, Forbes released an article that touched on this issue. Entrepreneurs Sergei Revzin and Vadim Revzin explained:
“Until recently, podcast content based on specific interests of the listener has been notoriously difficult to find. Even if you already consumed other podcasts, the only way to discover new shows, aside from the limited functionality of the recommendations on the iTunes podcast platform, was to hear about a show from one you were already listening to, or more likely from a friend or a co-worker who was a big fan.”
They went on to say:
“But with advertisers flocking to this growing medium, with total ad revenue growing to $1.8 billion in 2022, the technology companies that are hosting and distributing podcasts, like Stitcher, Castbox, iTunes, and Google Podcasts, are paying attention to discovery like never before.”
Spotify has also been working with podcasters to make their content more discoverable. In February 2020, the Spotify founder and CEO said this in a news release:
“Just as we’ve done with music, our work in podcasting will focus intensively on the curation and customization that users have come to expect from Spotify. We will offer better discovery, data, and monetization to creators.”
This is very good news for podcasters, and promising for people trying to grow an audience.