Podcast power listeners drive big numbers of listening hours (Stitcher report, Part 2)

After sharing some of the Stitcher Podcasting Report 2021 (see coverage HERE), we return today to look at Part 2 of the interesting release. This report (get it HERE) examines listening and user metrics within the Stitcher app, which, because of its popularity and scale, might be considered a guide to user tendencies at wider scale.

Much of Part 2 is devoted to analyzing hours spent listening — how many, at what times, and type of listeners. Naturally, in a report of 2021 metrics, Covid plays a part. Podcast listening hours dipped in Stitcher, then recovered, during Covid, as expected and exhaustively reported in other measurements. Perhaps more interesting is a longer view of monthly listening hours over 11 years, in which we see spectacular growth in monthly listening hours — and it’s important to know the chart below is a per-listener measurement:

Digging into 2020, we can see how the voracious appetite for podcasts is fueled. In the chart below, dark blue indicates percent of total Stitcher users; light blue indicates percent of total listening hours.

Dark blue indicates percent of total Stitcher users; light blue indicates percent of total listening hours.

So, the big appetite is driven by a small percentage of power listeners. Seventy-eight percent of users drive less than one-quarter of listening hours (21%), while less than one-quarter of users (21%) drive over 75% of hours (79%).

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