The last post described a reasonable way to categorize Podcast subject matter, based on fifteen iTunes categories. There are more than 100 active Podcast directories, and it would be impossible to search, inspect, and categories the thousands of Podcasts they list. Instead, we looked at seven directories that had summaries of their listings by category. We then mapped their categories to the iTunes category system, to get eight independent estimates of the distribution of Podcasts by subject. Based on this data, we made an estimate of the distribution of Podcasts by subject.
This was a list only of what feeds have been created—not which subjects are listened to, most often. The categories with the most feeds seemed to be "social" ones—music commentary, news & political commentary, rants about life or love, personal journals, and other soft stuff that comes from the heart. Second place went to what I would describe as "education." This included language lessons, help with personal finance, information on games and hobbies, and podcasts about science, medicine or health. The last group of categories--but not far behind--was entertainment. TV & film, and comedy are in this group.
As I mentioned earlier, iTunes has about 2,000 entries for each of its categories. If their catalog is comprehensive (i.e., included every published podcast feed), the Podcast market would have about 35,000 feeds. However, when one compares the listings on the different directories, each has some unique items. It is likely that some Podcast publishers don’t get around to listing on iTunes. So, let’s be conservative and add another 5,000 “active” podcasts to those listed already on iTunes, for a total of 40,000 active Podcast feeds. (English language-only!) Of course, there could be 10,000 or more additional Podcasts that have only a single episode, are no longer being produced, etc. Some of these “ephemeral” entries could develop into stable feeds. But most are likely to remain undiscovered, unappreciated, and unexploited.
A recent survey by Edison and Arbitron showed that 18% of the households they surveyed had listened to an audio podcast in the past year. That suggests that at least 20 million US consumers listened to Podcasts last year. A similar study by eMarketer apparently estimated 18 million Americans listened to Podcasts in 2007. (I say apparently because the details of the study are available only to those who buy their study.) A recent Universal McCann study says about 30 million Americans have downloaded a Podcast. This study lumps audio and video Podcasts together. Therefore, I think it supports the figures for audio Podcasts only, from the other studies.
Let’s assume we had about 20 million Americans downloading Podcasts in 2007. How often did they download Podcasts? Which categories did they download the most? We’ll put our guess on the answers to these questions in a future post.
Comments