Attention attention! The number of new podcasts is totally falling!!! 1eleven Save yourself who can! The headlines on relevant websites are similar these days. Whether this is true is controversial because the scene is in transition and data is difficult to collect. However, the argument is superfluous.
Daniel AJ Sokolov )
Daniel AJ Sokolov has been writing for heise online since 2002, initially from Vienna. Since 2012, as heise online’s North America correspondent, he has been trying to understand Canadians and Americans and make their nature understandable.
Because it doesn’t really matter whether there are three million podcasts that are still maintained with 157 million real episodes, as Listen Notes has measured and refers to uncounted podflashes that are orphaned after one or two episodes – or whether there are twice as many, because Spotify claims to offer 5.5 million podcasts that Listen Notes cannot easily capture. Even Listen Notes’ lower numbers counted 72,000 new podcast episodes in 2022. Every single day. What difference does it make if that goes up to 100,000 a day or if we have to settle for 75,000?
Basically, it is a sign of maturity when the number of new entrants decreases. The decisive factor is how the offer is accepted, i.e. how many listeners there are and how often and for how long they listen. The numbers also vary widely. The consensus is that there are hundreds of millions of weekly podcast listeners, and that number is growing rapidly.
According to Insider Intelligence, China, Argentina, France and Germany will experience double-digit growth rates this year; The market researcher does not collect this data for Austria and Switzerland, but we can expect a similar influx of listeners. Exact measurements are difficult because podcast episodes are often downloaded automatically. However, this does not mean that every download is listened to immediately and in its entirety by exactly one person.
Lots of leeway
There is enough room for growth. On the one hand, because the listening rates for the under-25s and the over-55s are lower than for the ages in between. On the other hand, because there is still a lot of room for improvement: podcasts currently live mainly from word of mouth (do you already know the twelve heise podcasts?). Recommendation algorithms like those we know from YouTube or Tiktok could attract significantly more listeners. The hope for the further development of such algorithms lives on, otherwise we will end up back with productions that are created for algorithms and not for people.
Sound editing tools face a leap in usability and performance. Adobe is currently showing podcast software that allows recordings to be cut using spoken words rather than frequency curves. ÄÄhs and Aahs should be able to be deleted automatically. These and other AI tools can quickly increase the quality of production and reduce the time required. Improved speech recognition should make it easier for the hearing-impaired to listen. In addition, we are guaranteed not to have seen the latest innovation in podcast formats and podcast distribution channels.
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Still in trouble is licenses for copyrighted music to be used in podcasts. In the US, there is no workable system for this at all. In Germany the GEMA a podcast tariff hung up, anyway. But he misses the reality of the podcast landscape. The cheapest category allows up to 10,000 downloads per month. If you want to play three GEMA songs for a total of 15 minutes, you pay just under 90 euros – per month that the podcast is available. Since the median download number of podcast episodes is probably two to three dozen, it would be cheaper for most podcasts to give each listener vouchers for the legal purchase of three MP3 files.
