Podcast listening continues to soar
If you’ve ever thought podcasting is just a fad, a medium soon to be taken over by the next big thing, think again. Many more Aussies are listening to more podcasts for longer.
Edison Research has just released its annual research results into audio consumption among Australian listeners. The Infinite Dial 2022 Australia highlights how more Australians have made podcasting a weekly habit of getting their news, information and entertainment.
The research is quite comprehensive, and I’d encourage you to download a PDF copy and have a look yourself, but a few things stuck out for me.
1. Weekly podcast listening has doubled since 2018.
More than a quarter of Australians over the age of 12 now listen to podcasts at least weekly. That equates to more than 5 million people. In 2017, only around 10% were listening to podcasts weekly.
2. Monthly podcast listening has also more than doubled since 2018.
Forty per cent of Aussies have listened to a podcast in the last month – a whopping increase from two years ago, when the monthly figure was 25%.
3. Regular podcast consumers are spending more time listening each week
For those who listen to podcasts on a weekly basis, the amount of time spent listening has increased from four hours and 40 minutes in 2018, to seven hours and six minutes in 2022. It goes to show that once podcasting becomes a habit, people seek out more of the great stuff to listen to.
4. A growing trend: listening in the car!
To me this is the really interesting stat: device most often used to listen to podcasts. In 2018, the in-car entertainment system didn’t get a mention. The process of listening to on-demand spoken-word audio was a barrier. You had to spend several minutes before taking off to pair the Bluetooth to your phone, open your podcast app and find the podcast you’d like to listen to and then take off. Now, with in-car entertainment systems standard in most new cars, it’s much more seamless to listen to podcasts while driving.
