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Comment by bastawhiz | Hacker News Reader

It's more than that, though. I own a podcast hosting service that Apple lists on their page of recommended services. Fewer people were starting podcasts in 2021 and 2022 than they were in 2019 and 2018 (it's hard to say before then, because my business has grown). The world, on the whole, lost a lot of interest in podcasting.

Part of that is a lack of a focus on podcasting. Serial drove a lot of interest, and that momentum faded with no obvious replacement. Podcasts were something folks made time for on their commutes and during their workouts. When folks started working from home en masse, they had less and less reason to listen.

Listenership fell for shows that have remained consistent. Some of my biggest customers have half or less than the number of listens they were pulling per week in 2019. And that's without changing cadence.

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> The world, on the whole, lost a lot of interest in podcasting.

Your customers' data may reflect that, but industry data shows that podcasting is still growing steadily. In their more recent (2022) report, Edison Research notes, "Monthly podcast listening saw growth year-over-year among those age 35-54, as 43% are now monthly podcast listeners, up from 39% in 2021."

> Some of my biggest customers have half or less than the number of listens they were pulling per week in 2019.

Shows fail. There are countless podcasts whose listens have grown substantially since 2019.

Listening is growing steadily but is podcast production?

I believe the data in the article, but a less clickbaity way to frame it is that podcast creation rates have returned to normal after an unprecedented pandemic pop.

> 43% are now monthly podcast listeners, up from 39% in 2021

The number of people listening isn't a proxy for _how much_ they are listening. Nor is the number of times they listen per month. What matters is the number of hours listened.

It's also the case that with more shows, there's a dilution of listeners' time. There's a pretty firm cap on the number of hours of podcasts that people can listen to. It's easy for folks to dig their heels in on one or two favorite shows and stop listening to the rest of the ones they had previously been interested in.

> There are countless podcasts whose listens have grown substantially since 2019.

And there are countless more podcasts whose listenerships have shrunk substantially since 2019.

> And there are countless more podcasts whose listenerships have shrunk substantially since 2019.

Yes, podcasts (and YouTube channels, and blogs, etc.) fail all the time. I'm not disputing it, but it's not a new phenomenon.

>Listenership fell for shows that have remained consistent. Some of my biggest customers have half or less than the number of listens they were pulling per week in 2019. And that's without changing cadence.

Do you think QCode has a viable business model? Producing scripted podcasts that are designed to be trial runs for TV shows/films?

I am not an expert on that side of the industry, but I'll say that there's good reason to believe their business model is viable. People subscribe and unsubscribe from streaming services (Netflix, HBO, etc.) as they find shows they're interested in or when content they care about wanes. I've subscribed to CBS for Star Trek and canceled after the season ends.

There's no reason to assume podcasting would behave differently: if there's compelling content, people will go out of their way to consume it. The trick is making audio that people will want to listen to.

This is insightful. I used to listen to several hours of podcasts a day, but it was mostly while commuting and at the gym. When I switched to remote work and outdoor runs during the pandemic, I fell out of the habit, and I haven't listened to one in months.

I wonder how they count this? I use overcast app. It automatically downloads episodes of anything I’m subscribed to. But I migh not listen to it. Or I might listen to five minutes and delete. What level of truth do these podcast stats catch?

The IAB publishes guidelines for how downloads are counted as listens. If you download but don't listen, it still counts as a listen. The relative changes to listenership matter a lot more than every one of the downloads being a real, legitimate listen.

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