Report: Spotify, Amazon, Apple Betting Big On Podcasts

If there was any remaining doubt that Spotify is extremely serious about podcasts, last week the Swedish streaming company that already spent more than half a billion dollars in the past two years to acquire Gimlet Media, Anchor, Parcast, and The Ringer added an exclusive deal with Joe Rogan reportedly worth $100 million, according to Daniel Roberts at Yahoo Finance.

According to Edison Research’s 2020 Infinite Dial report, 37% of the U.S. population now listens to a podcast at least once a month, or 104 million people. That’s a large number, though not enormous, and the number of weekly podcast listeners is far lower: 68 million. Although the biggest podcasts have laundry lists of brand sponsors (Rogan’s include 23andme, Blue Apron, Square’s Cash App, Casper, Dollar Shave Club, Postmates and Quibi), the industry still generates less than $1 billion in ad sales per year.

But look at the growth rate, writes Roberts.   The number of monthly podcast listeners jumped 16% in the last year. And the number has more than doubled since 2015. Meanwhile, weekly listeners are extremely engaged: the average weekly listener listens to six podcasts per week. And the demographics are squarely in the sweet spot advertisers want: half of monthly podcast listeners are between ages 12 and 34.

Edison’s report also notes that 169 million Americans listen to some form of “online audio” each week, a much larger number than the weekly or monthly podcast listeners, and podcast bulls are banking that many of those “online audio” listeners (think music streaming, music videos on YouTube, or streaming radio) will become podcast listeners.

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