Is podcasting industry facing post-pandemic struggles?

A woman walks using her headphones on Tuesday, Jan. 17, 2023, in New York. (AP Photo/Andres Kudacki)

(TND) — Podcasting no doubt enjoyed gains during the pandemic.

Podcast advertising revenues surpassed $1 billion for the first time in 2021, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau.

But some figures show listening dropped off a bit last year.

And the number of new podcasts plummeted nearly 80% since 2020, according to podcast search engine Listen Notes.

Is the industry facing some post-pandemic struggles?

This chart shows the number of new podcasts released each year, according to to podcast search engine Listen Notes. (Courtesy of Listen Notes)

Industry experts we talked to don't think that's the case.

Melissa Kiesche, a senior vice president at Edison Research, said that while “there could be elements of the industry that are rightsizing,” mostly she’s still seeing steady growth.

There are plenty of stories out there saying the podcasting industry is doomed,” Kiesche said. “That's not what we're seeing in the data.”

Edison Research has been tracking consumer habits with podcasts since 2008.

Back then, Edison just wanted to know if people had heard of the emerging media form.

Today, they track an array of listening habits.

Edison’s annual Infinite Dial survey is something of an “industry report card,” Kiesche said.

In addition, Edison has a subscription-based quarterly tracker of audio usage called Share of Ear.

Last year’s edition of the Infinite Dial report indeed showed small drops in weekly and monthly podcast listening between 2021 and 2022.

When the survey was conducted in January 2022, 38% of respondents said they had listened to a podcast within the last month. That was a drop from 41%, an all-time high, in 2021.

This chart shows the percentage of Americans with monthly podcast listening habits by year. (Courtesy of Edison Research)

Kiesche said she suspects some listeners who had “dabbled” with podcasts in 2021 really did stop listening, at least regularly, by the time 2022 came around.

But she also thinks that drop may have been an “anomaly, something about the timing of the study and where people were in their lives at that point.”

She noted that COVID-19 was causing new disruptions for people at that time.

She’s hopeful 2023’s Infinite Dial report, which is “being baked at the moment” and slated for a March release, will show a resumption of steadily increasing podcast consumption.

She also noted that the quarterly Share of Ear studies, which use a different collection method, has never shown a decrease in listening.

The founder and CEO of Listen Notes, the company that says there’s been a nearly 80% drop in new podcasts since 2020, is also optimistic about the future of the industry.

He partially attributes that drop to changing consumer habits as the pandemic waned.

But he also thinks many of the new podcasts during the pandemic were of the short-lived, low-quality variety.

People tried out podcasting during COVID, created one or two short episodes, then moved on and abandoned the show, he said.

Having fewer low-quality shows is actually a good thing for the industry, he said.

“I'm still bullish on podcasting,” he said via email.

IAB is forecasting that podcast ad revenues will balloon to over $4 billion by 2024.

And Kiesche, with Edison Research, says there’s still plenty of growth potential in the market.

On average, Americans 13 years and older now spend 4 hours and 17 minutes listening to audio. As of the most recent quarter, 8% of that time went to podcasting.

That’s up from 2% back in 2014.

And there’s reason to believe podcasting’s slice of the audio pie will grow.

Over-the-radio is still the biggest share, with 38% of listening time, according to the Share of Ear data. But radio’s time allotment is down from 53% in 2014.

Podcasting is “still getting its legs and growing,” Kiesche said.