The podcasting industry is booming. Statistics show that there are millions of podcasts published (about 4.3 million according to Podcast Index and 3.2 million according to ListenNotes). When looking at some podcast statistics even further, things look especially impressive for 2024 and beyond. According to ListenNotes, there were around 203,000 new podcasts released in 2018. The following year, that figure jumped to nearly 337,000.
The growth seemed quite significant back in 2019, but 2020 brought over 1,000,000 new podcasts/shows(!), a record number that has tripled the previous year. So what exactly happened in 2020? There is no doubt it was an odd year, many people were locked down in their homes for long periods of times, but we also believe that podcasting became a much larger global trend during 2020.
The number of new shows In 2021 (~740,000) and 2022 (244,000) seemed to spiral downwards quite fast, but this trajectory has somewhat flattened in 2023 (212,000 new podcasts).
The growth trend for new podcasts seems to be going down, and that may indeed be the case, but one can’t ignore the number of active podcasts (according to ListenNotes, 2023 reached an all time high for that metric), the number of new episodes per year (each year between 2020 and 2023 had between 27-30 million new episodes, so that number seems rather stable). If you think about the new episodes per year metric – that brings us very close to 100,000,000 published episodes, which is a huge milestone! (considering some episodes are deleted or no longer available publicly)
It’s still a little early to give insightful stats for 2024, but in this article we’ve gathered a few key statistics that goes through the last few years, and we give an outlook to 2024 and beyond. (we’ll update the article with fresh data as much as we can)
Podcasting is still trendy and is definitely here to stay. We can really notice a shift towards more professional podcasts – more brands are releasing their own shows (B2B podcasting), celebrities, actors, athletes often host their own podcasts, and indie podcasters from all around the world are following the trend and also finding it easier to produce and release episodes.
2024 podcast statistics:
How many podcasts are there?
There are currently around 3,200,000 podcasts out there, according to ListenNotes.
PodcastIndex.org suggests that there are in fact over 4.3 million podcasts. We couldn’t find the reason the stats differ that much between PodcastIndex and ListenNotes, but they might have different filtering applied on their numbers, so we assume the real answer is somewhere in between. (there are a lot of dead/empty podcasts, or feeds that only include spammy 10-second episodes etc.)
Amplifi and Podnews, 44% of the podcasts have less than 3 episodes! Only 720k podcasts have more than 10 episodes. They also share that out of those 720k podcasts, only 156k are releasing a weekly episode.
How many podcast listeners are listening to podcasts on a weekly basis?
According to Edison Research, more than 80 million people in the US are listening on a weekly basis. You can only imagine the number on a global scale, as podcasting is really available everywhere.
Podcast listener projections for 2024
According to Statista, there would be 100 million people who listen or listened to a podcast in the US alone on a monthly basis. With many new podcasts launching every day, and new listeners joining on board, we can only expect this number to grow further in the future.
Forecasts & growth trends around podcasting for 2024 and beyond
According to another recent study by Statista, the total number of listeners in the US market would reach 254 million by 2027.
How many active podcasts are there?
There are about 700k active podcasts. The term “Active” is a little hard to define. If we only look at podcasts that released at least one episode in 2022, the number is about 500,000. Listeners can still listen to older podcasts that have not released any episodes this year, and some shows are just taking a short break, so it doesn’t necessarily mean that the rest of the podcasts are actually dead.
Where are podcasters coming from?
Most of the podcasters are coming from the US (around 2,000,000). While India and China have the most listeners, they only account for 42k podcasts.
What is the number one podcast in the world?
According to Spotify‘s statistics page, the current number 1 podcast in the world is “The Joe Rogan Experience” podcast. This information shouldn’t surprise anyone, as Spotify decided to acquire the Joe Rogan Experience show for about $200 million during 2020. Joe Rogan’s podcast had one of the most popular YouTube channels at the time, and once acquired by Spotify – it’s exclusively available on Spotify. It’s important to note that Spotify are not sharing their full podcast listening stats, so it makes it a little hard to compare with other shows. Services like Chartable, Podtrac or ListenNotes can sometimes provide more comprehensive stats and podcast ranking. Keeping podcasting as an open format of distributed RSS feeds would help tracking the number one podcast at all times.
What languages are most podcasts in?
1.97M podcasts are in English. The second most popular language, Spanish, is far behind with only 365k podcasts.
Other podcast industry trends
AI was probably the #1 trend in the tech world during 2023, and could very well continue to be an important one during 2024 and beyond. This hasn’t skipped the podcasting industry. We’ve seen a surge in AI tools for podcasters to create easier workflows. (editing, transcribing or even full AI powered podcasts)
Ad spend still accounts for a large chunk of podcast revenues. However, we’re seeing a trend towards alternative monetization options and business models.
Video is another growing trend, while podcasting used to be 100% audio in early days. (well, nearly 100%). There are more than more podcasters who release their regular audio-based RSS feed, but also on video platforms like YouTube.
Conclusion – Podcast Statistics & Trends
The podcasting industry is growing – both in active podcasts, number of episodes published and listener number. It’s not too late to start a podcast. You can find listeners all over the world. It’s important to pick a topic and genre you’re fully interested in. It’s important to produce high quality content and publish episodes regularly in order to and grow one’s podcast.
One proven method for building credibility for a podcast is to create a full website for it. It’d help you establish a stronger brand and interact directly with listeners to grow the show. A podcast website would help with marketing, but also give your listeners an improved and unique experience. To build a full podcast website that’s also automated and synced with your RSS feed, check out Podcastpage.io!
This article include data from Statista, Spotify, 2021 Infinite Dial Edison report, Nielsen-Podcasting Today 2021 report, ListenNotes.com, and PodcastIndex. Other sources may be linked separately within the article.
