More than a decade ago, podcasts were the talk of the town; the next big thing for broadcasters, publishers and wannabe internet celebrities alike. And while podcasts have proved a popular addition to many peoples’ daily diets of digital content, it feels as though the past two years has seen the medium take off with a renewed vigour.
To test this theory, The Media Blog polled 1,352 podcast listeners and found 73% of respondents say they now spend more time listening to podcasts than they did two years ago. Only 5% said their time spent listening to podcasts has gone down in that time.
What’s more, 49% of respondents say they listen to five or more different podcasts each week.
A dedicated 14% say they listen to 10 or more, with comedy (66.5%), sport (51%), news and current affairs (47%) and movies and TV (38%) the most popular subjects in respondents’ podcast feeds.
How long should a podcast be?
And how long should a podcast be? More than a third (38%) of respondents said as long as a podcast is good enough, they’ll listen however long it is. However, 21% said an hour is just right and 20.5% opted for 45 minutes, while just 17% thought 30 minutes or less was long enough.
In terms of how people discover new podcasts, recommendations on social media are the biggest driver, for 71% of respondents. However, word of mouth recommendations come a close second (63%) and 90% of respondents say they have personally recommended podcasts to other people over the past year.
What are the most popular podcasts?
The survey also asked people for their favourite podcasts and the top 10 looked like this (percentages show proportion of respondents who named each podcast as a favourite):
- Guardian Football Weekly (17.2%)
- Adam Buxton (13.8%)
- Friday Night Comedy from BBC Radio 4 (8.2%)
- Football Ramble (7.9%)
- Serial (7.4%)
- This American Life (7.2%)
- Kermode and Mayo’s Film Review (5.9%)
- Pod Save America (5.6%)
- My Dad Wrote A Porno (5.2%)
- West Wing Weekly (3.4%)
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