U.S. podcast listening reach new high: 47% listened one last month, +12% YoY

I wish I could <i>get</i> them. I can’t pay attention to them well enough to follow along if I’m doing anything else at all—so I may as well engage with audio-visual content instead. This entire huge medium is basically not usefully accessible to me.<p>For whatever reason, I don’t have this problem with news or talk radio in the car. Podcasts? I can’t follow the topic well enough, even if I’m just driving on a mostly-empty highway. Dunno why.<p>[edit] same with audio books, actually. I can’t follow along unless I’m doing <i>nothing</i> else.

There is a link at the bottom of this article to the presentation by Infinite Dial; here it is: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.edisonresearch.com&#x2F;wp-content&#x2F;uploads&#x2F;2024&#x2F;03&#x2F;The-Infinite-Dial-2024-Deck.pdf" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.edisonresearch.com&#x2F;wp-content&#x2F;uploads&#x2F;2024&#x2F;03&#x2F;Th...</a><p>A huge question for me is a better breakdown of the listening by age. The report has age ranges: 12-34 is a range, 35-54 is a range, 55+ is range. Am I missing something? 12-34 is a crazy range in my opinion that needs to be further broken down.

Only tangentially related but can we all just take a moment to appreciate that a fundamentally decentralized technology such as podcasts can grow to be such a huge market? Certain things about podcasts are only really possible because of their decentralized nature:<p>- Skippable ads (if you use a client that locks this down, just change clients)<p>- Being able to host in one place and have that feed get placed on any number of aggregators such as Apple&#x2F;Spotify&#x2F;etc.<p>- Being able to change hosts if you&#x27;re unhappy with price&#x2F;quality&#x2F;etc.<p>In case you&#x27;re wondering how podcasts are decentralized, you can thank RSS. A technology that feels forgotten in some ways has single-handedly made this all possible.

Podcasts are an important part of my language learning stack.<p>There&#x27;s a few intermediate French podcasts I listen to. They intentionally speak more slowly and clearly. Sometimes I&#x27;ll listen to them multiple times, understanding a little more each time. Or I&#x27;ll re-listen to them with the transcript. Spotify has auto-generated transcripts for some!<p>Other times I&#x27;ll listen to native French podcasts for news and stuff. These are much harder to understand, but I&#x27;m really excited to get to the level where I can understand these, there&#x27;s just so much content! Unfortunately slowing them down with Spotify doesn&#x27;t work great for me.<p>I listen to them while I run, or in the mornings I&#x27;ll go outside with my cats and stand around and drink coffee and listen to podcasts.

Podcasts have always felt a bit alien to me. I know they exist, and people apparently listen to them, yet I haven&#x27;t done so nor do I know anyone who has. They only seem to come up occasionally as advertisements.<p>They also feel like they occupy a weird middle space. They aren&#x27;t as low-attention as something like television - without the visual component you need to pay attention more to &#x27;get it&#x27; and follow along.<p>But it doesn&#x27;t feel right to sit there and solely listen to it while doing <i>nothing</i> else. But I&#x27;m not sure what else you can do that doesn&#x27;t eat up enough concentration to follow along. Cooking or cleaning maybe? Things that you can do from muscle memory.

I feel like this podcasting hype is filling a sort of para-social gap that we’ve had in the last years. Listening to podcasts feels like you’re on a couch with your mates, just without the awkwardness of.. you know… socialising.

Looking at Google trends[0], it seems &quot;podcast&quot; was pretty stagnant between 2007-2017 in the US (and worldwide).<p>The growth in 2018 and 2019 is interesting tho. I would&#x27;ve thought that covid lockdowns are what brought it to the masses.<p>[0]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;trends.google.com&#x2F;trends&#x2F;explore?date=all&amp;q=%2Fm%2F04058p&amp;hl=en" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;trends.google.com&#x2F;trends&#x2F;explore?date=all&amp;q=%2Fm%2F0...</a>

AntennaPod hooked to a NewPipe folder = ad-free unlimited content.

Meanwhile, at Google: &quot;Let&#x27;s add our podcast app to the long list of Google Graveyard apps and further erode user trust!&quot;

It&#x27;s fun to think that radio is making a comeback.<p>You&#x27;d think that adding moving pictures would make the experience better but it doesn&#x27;t seem to be the case.

it&#x27;s too bad FM radio is dying. my car trips are usually 10-20 minutes. that&#x27;s not long enough to faff with my phone or carplay. I greatly prefer to have preset radio stations. luckily i&#x27;m in a big metro area but I&#x27;ve lost a few over the years and the quality of the others has declined in line with revenue.

Just a couple of days before Google discontinues Google Podcasts

That sounds incredibly unlikely to be true

Really disappointing to note that podcasts.google.com is shutting down on Tuesday, April 2nd. It was a simple service that was convenient and free (as in beer), and it worked across the web and the mobile app. Presumably when they launched the service there was some intention of being able to benefit from analyzing trends and habits and so on, but they&#x27;ve now decided it&#x27;s not worth it.<p>I think the current intent is to fold podcasts into YouTube or something, but the underlying message is very clear: Do not rely on Google services.

The credence people give to podcasters with no credentials whatsoever is frightening. Broadcast news has to at least attempt some modicum of truth, but podcasts are a free for all. The number of recommendations I&#x27;ve gotten for so and so podcast &quot;it&#x27;s really interesting!&quot; that spews half truths and complete bullshit is alarming.