This week’s release of The Podcast Landscape 2024, a Sounds Profitable production in partnership with Signal Hill Insights, identifies and measures aspects of listener consumption that include:
- Basic listening commitment to podcasts
- Retention and churn
- Content preferences
- Discovery methods
- Attitudes of non-listeners.
Yesterday we covered some of the findings in the first three chapters. Today we examine what the study discovered about what types of content listeners like, their discovery methods, and why some portion of the 5,000-person survey cohort doesn’t listen to podcasts at all.
Diversity of Taste
When questioned about podcast genres they have selected in the last month, the 5,000 survey respondents revealed preferences for Comedy, News, and Sports as the top three types. It’s worth remembering that Comedy is the self-selected category of interview podcasts. The Joe Rogan Experience is the prominent example; it is a deep-interview conversation show that rarely bursts out laughing or causes listeners to.
Funny we should mention Rogan, because his Experience is the most-mentioned favorite podcast, by a gigantic margin. Thirteen percent of responses west for that podcasts, while the #2 cited show (Crime Junkie) accounted for only two percent of responses. In the top 20 “favorite” shows, 16 received only one percent of votes.
“Notably, as the audience continues to be more mainstream, there is increased interest in podcasts about TV, Film, and even brands.” The Podcast Landscape 2024
Overwhelming Indifference (to brands)
This interesting question was asked: “Imagine you are interested in a podcast and you learn it is produced by a company that offers products/services to consumers of businesses. In general, does a company’s involvement make you more or less likely to listen to it?” The respondents as a group answered clearly:
Ongoing vs. Limited
The study authors editorialize about the unequal audiences for ongoing shows and limited series: “Ongoing shows continue to be the backbone of the medium — but we need to do more to trumpet the quality of limited series shows.” That suggested advocacy is based on a wide disparity in preferences: Ongoing weekly shows are favored by 75% of the survey audience, while limited series with fixed numbers of episodes are chosen by only 36%.
A piece of good news about limited-series listening is that 74% of the audience looks for another one after finishing a show.
Discovery
“Recommending podcasting may be more important than recommending a podcast.”
In exploring consumer discovery habits, the survey script interestingly removed “personal recommendations” from the field of allowable answers. The entire resulting list of search strategies is interesting:
YouTube (52%) unsurprisingly sits atop the above chart, and its influence is growing. In last year’s survey, YouTube captured 48% of recognition.
The study dives deep into the anatomy of personal recommendations. It asks whether recommendations go both ways, the many personal relationships which result in podcast suggestions (friends beat family and colleagues), and more.
The 26%
Slightly over one-quarter of Americans represented in theis survey have never listened to a podcast. Sounds Profitable makes a key point right at the top:
“It’s tempting to point to ‘discovery’ as the cause of all friction in podcasting, but the real sticking point is inertia. The non-listener seems settled with their choices — but opportunities abound.”
When asked “Why the heck not?” (not the survey wording), about one-third agreed with “My existing options give me what I need.” Sounds Profitable calls out the 13% response (“I can’t find a podcast that seems interesting”) to note that 18% chose that answer last year, perhaps implying that better discovery is shrinking the “never listened” group.
Our two-day coverage of this annual study is a partial, limited capture of the 74-page public release. Looking at the original release is strongly recommended. It is HERE.
