Larry Rosin: What’s a podcast again?

This guest column by Larry Rosin, President of Edison Research, was originally published on The Infinite Dial blog.

One of the most exciting developments of 2014 in the audio space was what seems to be a ‘tipping point’ for Podcasting. Pushed forward by the enormous and deserved attention paid to “Serial,” there have been endless articles written about Podcasting in just the last few months. Most of these articles, I’m happy to say, quote Edison’s research.

At the same time, I’ve been consistently surprised as to how many people still say they don’t even know what a Podcast is. At a recent social event, I listened in as my wife attempted to evangelize “Serial” to a variety of people in our suburban New Jersey circle. Most everyone didn’t just not know what “Serial” is, they didn’t know what Podcasting was.

The numbers back this up. In January of last year, we asked our Infinite Dial sample the simple question: “Are you familiar with the term Podcasting?” At that time only 48% of our nationally representative sample said they were. The highest awareness was among 25-34 year-olds, at 61%.

Meanwhile, our other research series, the newer “Share of Ear” study, has already produced information that shows the growth of Podcasting — read Tom Webster’s post about it here.

Infinite Dial 2015 is in the field, sponsored again by our generous friends at Triton Digital. The results will be presented in a Webinar on Wednesday, March 4 at 2pm eastern. Of course we will be asking all manner of questions about Podcasting – including our simple awareness question. I can’t wait for Edison to report its updated Podcasting numbers.