BBC says podcast listening will quadruple by 2021

Welcome to over 230 new subscribers last week, including folks from YLE, Nova Entertainment, MediaWorks, Spotify, Himalaya, BFM, RTL, SRF, The Guardian and Radio-Canada.

• By 2021, podcast listening will quadruple - up to 13.6% of audio listening from 3% now, according to the BBC’s Head of Research for Radio and Education, Alison Winter. At Radiodays Europe today in Lausanne, she outlined how the BBC Sounds app, which uses mandatory sign-in, offers better data analytics and allows better recommendations. “We hope that in the coming months, BBC Sounds [the app] will be an international proposition”, added Ben Chapman, Head of Digital for BBC Audio and Music.

• “The sense of connection and ownership is far more on a podcast than on broadcast TV or radio,” says Chris Mason of the BBC’s Brexitcast, speaking at Radiodays Europe today via video: adding that the podcast generates significant amounts of contact via social media. The podcast is now filmed for BBC television. Dino Sofos, the podcast’s producer, also shared that they have had over 4m downloads for the podcast’s 100 episodes.

• Paula Szuchman and Emily Botein from WNYC Studios also spoke this morning at Radiodays Europe, highlighting how they use audio to build community, and focusing on “listener episodes” - which do better than well-known names. Every show, they said, is created with listener interaction in mind.

• iHeartRadio President Darren Davis, speaking at Radiodays Europe, said that the iHeartRadio app, which includes podcasts, has been downloaded 2.1bn times, and has 127m registered users. “Be everywhere the consumers are, with the services and the products they expect.” is their strategy; Davis said that podcasting was a new audience development tool for talk radio, reaching younger audiences.

• In the US - a little snippet of interesting news from the latest Nielsen data (p14): more people listen to podcasting per week (19%) than listen to SiriusXM (16%). (The figures are from Q3 2018 - there’s been more growth since).

  
  Aug 11 2023: This broken link now points to the Internet Archive.

• Podcasting in Puerto Rico is “at a turning point”, according to Adonde Media, in a post with data from the country.

• The CBC reports on a new way of making your own podcast: borrow the equipment.

• A podcast platform for arabic speakers, PODU, has won funding at the University of Chicago.

• Is everyone happy that Google Podcasts is now transcribing podcasts? Some have doubts.

We are at Radiodays Europe in Lausanne today and tomorrow.

Podcasts

Runpod is a new podcast from Global, aimed at people new to running and seasoned marathoners alike

Bomber released episode 3 last Friday. This podcast, focusing on the 2018 Austin serial bomber, is attracting a large amount of media attention.
• Our friends at Podsights also point us to The Weekly Skip: a podcast of hosts from hundreds of shows just reading brand names. The Quip episode is our favourite.