New York (AFP)
No less than 885,262 new podcasts were put online in 2020, almost triple the total published the previous year (318,517), according to the specialist company Chartable, of which just under half in a language other than English .
In just five years, the number of podcasts produced has increased 17-fold, according to Chartable, which estimates that the number of downloads almost tripled in 2020 (+ 180%), according to a report released Wednesday.
While around 30% of podcasts uploaded in 2020 had only one or two episodes, some 23%, or more than 200,000, currently have more than 10 episodes.
On the production side, Hindi has experienced the strongest growth (multiplied by 14.1), Chinese (8.4 times) and Portuguese (7.8) coming far behind, while English (1.9 ) and French (2.4), which already had a substantial supply, progressed less rapidly.
Educational podcasts (133,107) topped the genres offered, ahead of culture and society (121,556) and arts (94,360).
In terms of listening, Turkey has seen the strongest growth with more than five times the number of devices used (5.2), ahead of Italy (4.7) and Peru ( 3.8).
Over the past year, the Apple Podcasts platform has lost ground and accounted for just 38% of devices used to listen to programs at the end of 2020, up from 43% at the start of the year.
The big winner of this card redistribution is, unsurprisingly, Spotify, which now reaches 26% of the market, against 20% at the start of the year.
Unlike YouTube, where it is possible to generate income by being a small player on the platform, the podcast industry is quite concentrated and only a few thousand podcasts generate significant income.
In addition, advertising revenue is growing much slower than the number of programs.
In July, the IAB / PwC annual report forecast a growth of 14.7% of the podcast's advertising revenue in the United States in 2020, to approach one billion dollars.
© 2021 AFP