The Current State Of Podcasting

The Current State of Podcasting 2010 is Edison's fifth annual study of the behaviors, attitudes and consumption habits of the podcast audience in America. This study was originally presented at the Blogworld New Media Expo in Las Vegas on October 15, 2010. This presentation combined previously unreleased data from the Edison Research/Arbitron Internet & Multimedia series, along with previously released data from The American Youth Study 2010 and the Edison/ADM Consumer Attitudes to Podcast Advertising study, also from 2010.

Principal findings of the study included:

• The percentage of Americans who have ever watched or listened to a podcast is 45%, up from 43% one year ago. This equates to approximately 70 million Americans 12+.
• The podcast audience has migrated from being predominantly "early adopters" to more closely resembling mainstream media consumers.
• Podcast consumers continue to prefer consuming content at their desktop, not on dedicated media players, but mobile phone media consumption is surging.
• Podcast consumers index very highly for social networking behaviors.
• Two-thirds of podcast consumers have listened to digital audio files in their vehicles by connecting an iPod or other MP3 player to their car audio system.