A study by Pew Internet and American Life Project found that 12 percent of internet users in the US has downloaded a podcast, which is a 5 percent increase from findings earlier this year by the same group. This might seem to be a good trend for the podcasters as the number of people viewing podcasts is increasing rapidly. However, there is a flip side of the story too.
Those who have viewed podcasts are not hooked to it. In fact, just about 1 percent of the respondents to the survey said that they would view a podcast on a typical day just many would visit a certain blog (or blogs) as a part of their typical everyday online activity.
Podcast Alley, which offers a kind of directory service of shows says that it had just 1,000 podcasts listed same time two years back in November 2004. This number has swelled to over 26,000 different podcasts having more than a million episodes.
Mary Madden, senior research specialist, Pew says;
While podcast downloading is still an emerging activity primarily enjoyed by early adopters, the range of content now available speaks to both mainstream and niche audiences. We are at a crossroads of a major transition in the way media content is delivered and consumed.
Well, so far so good. However, that is only one side of the story as forecasts by research groups are often confusing. Last year The Diffusion Group forecasted that podcast audience would swell to 56 million by 2010 where as another research group Forrester Research said in May this year that it would be just 12 million.
So their professional research is as good as your guess.
Comments
I am hardly surprised by these findings. Podcasting is something that has unfortunately not been able to ”bust through”.
As someone who is really hooked on to podcasts, I find it really odd when people are completely oblivious to podcasts. But then, not many did know what feeds/aggregators were till, say, a year ago.