52 Podcast Statistics, Facts & Figures For 2021
Research in 2020 indicated that the podcast industry was booming. In 2019 there were over 750,000 active podcasts and 41% of podcast listeners reported listening to more podcasts than ever before.
No one could have anticipated what was to come. With COVID19 came country-wide lockdowns that gave people more time than ever to listen to podcasts and even to start their own up. There are now over 1,750,000 podcasts worldwide!
In 2020, 37% of Americans listen to podcasts monthly. If you’re considering incorporating a podcast into your content marketing strategy, you probably couldn’t pick a better time.
In this day and age, people rely on the opinions of others in order to make buying decisions. It’s also more important than ever to nurture leads. Making a podcast is a great way to achieve both of these marketing goals.
The same applies to product placement- advertising through podcasts is becoming more and more of a lucrative thing because it achieves these two goals.
In fact, podcast ad spend is projected to reach almost £75 million in the UK alone by 2024.
Whether you’re looking at starting a podcast, advertising through a podcast or you’re interested in the latest marketing data, you should read this article for a comprehensive guide to podcast statistics in 2021!
The first category of statistics- and arguably the most important- are those which give us information about who is listening to podcasts!
Whether you’re looking to build up an audience or just wondering whether your own podcast habits are typical, it is definitely worth checking these out…
1. 75% of Americans are now familiar with podcasting, meaning that they have heard of and understand the term.
2. 55% of Americans have listened to a podcast before. This is up from 51% in 2019 and only 40% in 2017.
3. The average listening time for Americans who listen to podcasts is 6 hours 39 mins per week.
3. The average listening time for Americans who listen to podcasts is 6 hours 39 mins per week.
4. Seven out of ten podcast listeners say they don’t do anything else whilst listening to podcasts.
5. 51% of people who listen to podcasts weekly will listen to 1-3 podcasts per week, but 12% will listen to 11 or more podcasts.
6. 80% of podcast listeners will listen to all or most of each episode. This is down from 86% in 2017.
7. Podcast computer listens went up from 29% to 31%, whilst smartphone listening went down from 71% to 69%.
8. 19% of listeners will increase the speed of a podcast whilst listening to it.
9. Across the board, comedy is the most popular podcasting genre, followed by education and news.
10. Podcast listeners tend to be much more active on social media. 94% are active on at least one social media channel. This is interesting when compared with the 81% of the entire population who are on social media.