1.6 million Australians are now downloading audio or video podcasts in an average four weeks, up from under 1 million just four years ago, and while this only represents just over 8% of the population, it is a 70% increase on 2015 figures according to a new study from Roy Morgan.
The study shows the increase of nearly 700,000 downloads since 2015 with downloads to mobile phones having more than tripled in the past four years.
By way of comparison a year ago Roy Morgan reported that around 2.2 million Australians visited leading streaming music site Spotify in an average four weeks, 1.3 million visited, SoundCloud and just over 520,000 visited third placed Triple M.
CEO of Roy Morgan, Michele Levine, says “Podcasts are a relatively new part of the media landscape but are making an increasing impact as audiences for the service are on a steady growth track up an impressive 70% over the last four years to over 1.6 million Australians in 2019.
“The ability to listen to your favourite podcast while commuting to and from work and tuning out from the hustle and bustle on crowded public transport, or just relaxing in your spare time to catch up on what’s been happening in an area of personal interest is appealing to a growing number of Australians.
“Driving the growth in podcasts is the convenience of being able to download the podcast directly to your mobile phone which obviously allows you to listen to the service wherever you want.”
Two articles at https://internationalpodcastday.com/podcasting-history/ and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Podcast give a history of podcasting starting in 2004 with the invention of the podcasting method and the early adopters of podcasting.
But according to the ABC, https://www.abc.net.au/technology/techexplained/articles/2011/04/11/3158016.htm (copy from "https" to ".htm" and paste in browser), podcasts or rather downloadable digital audio files have been available since 1999. Podcasts have been provided by diverse sources before being adopted by broadcasters.
The ABC has been an early adopter of podcasting since the early 2000s long before being adopted by the commercial broadcasting sector.
While anyone with a computer, audio software and microphone can make a podcast, a podcast's popularity depends on (a) the quality of the content and (b) a 'popular' distribution point such as the ABC, a particular broadcaster's site or iTunes. The list is not exhaustible.
Given the diverse sources of podcast producers, my question to the author of this article and/or the editor is how were statistics compiled for the number of podcasts in Australia for the 2014 to 2018 period?
Thank you,
Anthony of exciting Belfield
EDITOR: Thanks exciting Anthony, we always love your comments! The Roy Morgan research is from qualitative face to face interviews, not downloads, so the methodology is different. A Roy Morgan explanation paragraph says:
Research conducted directly with real people is qualitatively and quantitatively more valuable than information drawn only through automated processes from web browsers and complicated algorithms. It’s the only way to learn how many real people – not bots, devices, clicks, or impressions – visit a site. These are the latest results from Roy Morgan Single Source derived from in-depth face-to-face interviews with 1,000 Australians each week, 50,000 each year.