Radio Facts:
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Edison Research has made available this year’s edition of The Current State of Podcasting, a study of American podcast consumers’ attitudes and behaviors. The 2010 report is Edison’s fifth annual study and was unveiled earlier this fall at Blogworld in Las Vegas, and combined information from the Edison Research/Arbitron Internet & Multimedia series, along with previously released data from The American Youth Study 2010 and the Edison/ADM Consumer Attitudes to Podcast Advertising study, also from 2010.
Principal findings of the study included:
- The percentage of Americans who have ever watched or listened to a podcast is 45%, up from 43% one year ago. This equates to approximately 70 million Americans 12+.
- The podcast audience has migrated from being predominantly “early adopters” to more closely resembling mainstream media consumers.
- Podcast consumers index very highly for social networking behaviors.
- Two-thirds of podcast consumers have listened to digital audio files in their vehicles by connecting an iPod or other MP3 player to their car audio system.
Somewhat surprisingly, despite the growing numbers of smartphone [iPhone, Android, etc.] users, podcasts are being consumed primarily at the computer, and less frequently than last year via the mobile device or “dedicated media player” like the iPod or Zune.
Not so surprisingly, young [12-24] podcast consumers are listening to Pandora rather than AM/FM radio, watch and listen to podcasts on demand rather than by subscription/download, and discover new podcast content via social networks and in the iTunes podcast directory.
The Blogworld presentation examined “not only how podcasting has changed over the past five years, but also how those changes have created new opportunities for new media content producers.” The presentation is approximately 60 minutes long, and is available here; the presentation slides alone are at this link.