Podcast listening through Apple Watch: New metrics from Megaphone

Podcast tech company Megaphone crunched numbers related to how and when listeners use Apple Watches for podcast listening. Megaphone characterizes the results as a “stealth success story.” The report, posted by Megaphone’s data analyst Luke Riley, is HERE.

Listening via the Apple smartwatch is accomplished via Apple Podcasts on Apple Watch, an app which delivers data separately from the Apple Podcasts app on iPhones. And evidently the listening behavior is different too. In a series of charts and analyses, Riley draws a portrait of Apple Watch podcast listening which peaks in the evening, as listening by other means is reduced.

The data also establish that Watch listening happens more (by percentage of total listening) in rural states, and Riley speculates this might be connected to income demographics. More interesting is the possibility, also expressed b y the author, that there is a discovery dynamic at work here, and that rural listeners are discovering podcasts for the first time through the Apple smartwatch. A similar bump happened when Spotify added podcasts, Riley observes, and the suggestion is that new delivery platforms enlarge the podcast audience.

“We still have a lot to learn about Apple Watch listeners, and I’m excited to see how the app performs in the future,” Luke Riley said. “But we already have evidence that this new technology is changing what people listen to along with when and where they’re listening.”