Smart Home Speakers, AI-Enabled Video Search, Speech Recognition and AR/VR Technologies Have Ensured a Surge in the Popularity of Podcasts 

Podcasts recently have been hailed as the ‘in thing’, especially among millennials, who claim podcasts to be a big boon for their on-the-go lives. Podcasts are a millennial’s go-to channel to procure information on politics, sports, spirituality etc. Moreso, with claims of subscriptions getting cheaper and content getting richer, the marketing strategy behind promoting podcasts does seem to hit the spot.

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But is the global popularity of podcasts real or is it only hype? Let’s find out!

Recently, Reuters Institute’s surveyed 2000 people each, from a number of countries asking them about the possibility of listening to a podcast in that month. One-third of those surveyed agreed to have heard one! Surprisingly though, per ‘Statista,’ one-third of the 2000 Americans who answered the survey had heard a podcast in the last month. This figure is consistent with the global average for podcast listeners while the number reported from South Korea, Hong Kong, and Taiwan were higher than average. This could be attributed to a large cell phone market and amplified exposure to Social Media, especially in South Korea.

When Reuters surveyed European respondents, they concluded that the number of podcast listeners was relatively low. Europe has a long-standing culture of radio news and broadcasters do not feel the need to switch to this new format. Reuters also hinted that the low numbers in Europe may be due to a translation issue. The BBC iPlayer radio is extremely popular for hearing the news in the UK. However, downloads on such media may not always be labeled as podcasts and as such might not be reflected in the survey.

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