New study reveals explosive growth

Think you’re overwhelmed by podcasts? Well you’re not alone

A new podcast is launched every 30 seconds, a new study has found.

Researchers say that a total of 885,262 new shows were launched last year – almost treble the number started in 2019.

Industry experts Chartable say just under a third fizzle out ofter one or two episodes, but almost a quarter have run for ten or more.

Comedy was only the seventh most popular genre of new podcast with 63,847 - or roughly one every eight minutes. The leader was education, with 133,107.

The growth is largely driven by non-English language programmes, with a 14-fold increase in new shows increase in Hindi, for example.

Chartable has recorded around 2million podcasts in total, with more than 100million individual episodes.

Prolific podcaster Richard Herring reacted to the news:

OK, I was pretty busy. But who did the other five. https://t.co/2tmfElSSOp

— Richard K Herring (@Herring1967) February 8, 2021

Published: 8 Feb 2021