Tom Webster looked first at streaming, he said that over the past year what has increased is weekly online audio listening which has gone up in the US to 62% of people who were part of the Infinite Dial research. Monthly and weekly statistics show that streaming is now a ‘habit’ plus the amount of time they listen has now also gone up. There was a dip in audio due to a disruption in habits – watching more Netfliks, however things have stabilized and even podcasting listening has increased. He noted listening habits are different at home vs in the car. Share of ear research – the daily diary study – started in 2014 shows time spent listening by Americans is about 3 hours 44 mins a day and has remained stabled since 2014 though it was closer to 4 hours. 39% of US listening is FM/AM radio, “the (sic FM/AM radio is) single largest slice of the audio donut”, streaming is 18%, owned music has decreased, YouTube audio is 10% while Podcasts is 6% – this sounds small but is actually, if it’s in this research, important. Podcasting has driven spoken word audio in the ‘Spoken Word Audio Report’, there has been a significant change in listening to this type of content since 2014. The Infinite Dial 2021 study on Podcasting shows 162m Americans say they have listened to a podcast (over 50%). Podcasting has risen steadily, increasing in speed over the last five years. Tom spoke about the impact of the podcast ‘Serial’. Revenue has gone up at the same time which have also attracted new listeners. Monthly listening has also grown, the growth to 41% of the population listening to podcasts across all demographics of listening. 43% of women and 39% of women listened to a podcast in the last month that’s a similar profile to the demographic of the country. More diverse groups in terms of gender, ethnicity and age have all been attracted to podcasting. The ends of the graphs so younger and older people are listening to podcasts, for the older demographic this is due to the length of time podcasts have now been around. Ethnic diversity has grown and the podcast audience is more diverse than the US population. This is due to the diversity of content that is now available across ethnic groups. “Today at least 80m Americans listen to podcasts weekly nearing the 100m mark” Tom went on to give a wealth of data on types and number of shows listened to, some great insights into today’s radio and podcast market in the US, a great start to Radiodays Asia.
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