New podcast creation has fallen off a cliff
/ The number of new shows that debuted in 2022 was down 80 percent since 2020.
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People are launching way fewer podcasts
One thing I keep hearing over and over is that it is so much harder to launch a podcast now than it was, say, three or four years ago. And that is usually coming from people at established studios with at least some marketing might. For independent creators, it must be nearly impossible. It is not entirely surprising that, according to data compiled by Chartr from Listen Notes, fewer podcasts were created in 2022 than in the two years prior. Even so, the margin is shocking: the number of new shows created dropped by nearly 80 percent between 2020 and 2022.
Some of that can be attributed to the pandemic — podcast creation peaked in 2020 when people truly had nothing better to do. But the number of new shows in 2022 was even lower than pre-pandemic levels: 337,063 podcasts were launched in 2019, compared to 219,178 in 2022. New episode creation has fared somewhat better. Though still lower than 2020 and 2021 figures, Listen Notes logged 26.1 million new episodes published in 2022, up from the 18.1 million episodes in 2019.
Creators seem to recognize that until podcast discovery improves, launching a podcast may be a losing proposition. The system seemingly cannot effectively handle the number of podcasts that already exist. One small solution seems to be launching new shows on old feeds, such as what The New York Times did with Hard Fork and Sway’s RSS. The feed had a built-in audience and made it much easier for listeners to discover the new show. It may not have landed well with all subscribers ( or podcasters), but Sway ranks in the top five technology podcasts on Apple and Spotify several months after its launch.
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New podcast creation has fallen off a cliff - The Verge |
