Back in 2004, journalist Ben Hammersley was writing for the Guardian about audio blogs. He referred to them as podcasts, a combination of iPod and Broadcast, and the name stuck. They were first adopted and popularized by Apple on iTunes in 2014 and podcasts had something unique. They were freely available to anyone, they could be hosted anywhere, they were completely unmediated, and anyone could make a podcast with only a microphone, an internet connection, and a story to tell. In the past, podcasts required technologically literate individuals to look for and download or stream them online which limited their popularity. However, podcasting, especially nonfiction podcasting, has grown into a billion-dollar industry and it is becoming the new mainstream.
It all started with a podcast named The Serial back in 2014. It was the first podcast to create a serialized true crime narrative, and combined with the rise of smartphone ownership, Wi-Fi and 4G cellular data, the show exploded in popularity (Sisario, 2021). Podcasts were niche, but the number of people who listened to them increased slowly every year and starting in 2019, the number of people who listens to podcasts rose exponentially. At least half of the population of the United States have listened to a podcast and in Thailand as of 2020, 44% of internet users aged 16-64, listen to podcasts (Callerame, 2020). In India, as of January 2021, 57.6 million people regularly listen to podcasts and listeners are expected to grow by 30% each year (Sudevan, 2021). The number is expected to grow by 42% globally each year thanks to the coronavirus putting us all at home (Amburgey, 2020). The top 20 most popular podcasts, according to platforms like Spotify and iTunes, are mostly non-fiction podcasts where the host or hosts and guests talk around themselves and their thoughts on specific topics or they’re audio documentaries. This meant that the average length of a podcast episode is 41 minutes long (Misener, 2019). In our fast-paced world, people would assume that consumers would ignore podcasts just because of the length alone and consume shorter media instead, but they would be wrong. According to Winn (2019), 80% of listeners listen to the whole podcast and these aren’t just small dedicated audiences. Some examples are The Joe Rogan Experience which is a talk show that gets roughly 100 million listeners a week and 190 million downloads a month or Crime Junkie which is a true crime audio documentary that gets 22 million downloads a month. Spotify brought Joe Rogan and several other podcasting companies to become exclusive for them last year at the tune of several hundred million dollars with each purchase (Adgate, 2021). Companies were estimated to have spent roughly a collective 1 billion dollars on advertisements in podcasts in 2020. The number is still expected to grow.
Why are podcasts, and especially non-fiction podcasts, so popular? To start with, there are three types of non-fiction podcasts: the chumcast, where hosts talk about a topic, the crafted narrative, which are audio documentaries and the performative interview, where a host or hosts interview guests (McHugh, 2018). There are roughly equal numbers of them on the most popular podcasts lists on Spotify and iTunes. These three types of podcasts are so appealing because of their authenticity. There are no overbearing studios, little to no scripts, and minimal editing. In a world with increasingly fake and overproduced media, people are searching for genuine views and genuine connections, and the unedited sounds of a podcast immerses you, making you feel like you are listening to an intimate in-depth conversation. Podcasts are also an extension of radio. Radio was already a popular but dying medium, and those who already liked listening to radio took to podcasts easily, such as in India, except podcasts are portable and free to download. All three types of podcasts escape the constraints of traditional media and they are similar to traditional oral culture and storytelling we used to have pre-internet, allowing the human mind to form its own mental images which helps us better connect to the stories they tell. You can’t skip audio like a video or skim like a book which enforces a feeling of liveness. Some of the most popular podcasts in Thailand are created by news organization The Standard and an example of one of their episodes are two hosts and a guest just talking about their life experiences related to managing money for 40 minutes, which I found incredibly relaxing and informative. Since anyone can start a podcast and host it on their own, podcasting also allows marginalized people and minorities to have a voice. Such as A Sex Worker’s Guide to the Galaxy, a podcast about the experience and struggles of being a sex worker, which could not have been produced anywhere else due to the taboo subject matter (Quah et al., 2021).
Podcasts can be a rejection of hyperreality, as it is free from the grasps of corporations and governments seeking to control and regulate the flow of information. Hyperreality in this case is created by traditional media institutions distributing their own views of the world that may or may not be correct. Podcasts might also be a form of cultural imperialism, considering they started out as a uniquely American phenomenon and only started gaining popularity in other countries once an American podcast, The Serial, hit it big in 2014. But I would argue that this view is wrong. For one, podcasting is a medium. It simply provides a new and highly accessible format for local culture to spread, therefore podcasts are instead a form of globalization and cultural hybridity. Back in 2018, most Thai podcast listeners were young men and women with international educations, but now nearly half the country is listening, a clear form of cultural hybridity in the form of uniquely Thai podcasts.
References
Adgate, B. (2021, February 11). As podcasts continue to grow in popularity, ad dollars follow. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/bradadgate/2021/02/11/podcasting-has-become-a-big-business/?sh=65d758a2cfb4
Amburgey, I. (2020, April 22). COVID-19’s Impact on Podcast Listening (April Update). Voxnest Blog. https://blog.voxnest.com/coronavirus-impact-on-podcast-listening/
Callerame, S. (2020, March 30). Sleepless in Siam: Thai internet user behaviors. Lexicon. https://lexiconthai.com/en/blog/sleepless-in-siam/
McHugh, S. (2018). Memoir for your ears: the podcast life. Mediating memory: Tracing the limits of memoir, 104-122.
Misener, D. (2019, December 5). Podcast episodes got shorter in 2019. Medium. https://blog.pacific-content.com/podcast-episodes-got-shorter-in-2019-69e1f3b6c82f
Quah, N., Cortez, K., & Bracci, A. (2021, February 16). Does Clubhouse mean bad things for podcasting? Vulture. https://www.vulture.com/2021/02/does-clubhouse-mean-bad-things-for-podcasting.html
Sisario, B. (2021, February 25). Podcasting is booming. Will Hollywood help or hurt its future? The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/25/arts/podcasts-hollywood-future.html
Sudevan, P. (2021, January 18). How podcasts are taking off in India big time. The Hindu. https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/technology/how-podcasts-are-taking-off-in-india-big-time/article33602477.ece
Winn, R. (2019, April 11). 2019 podcast stats & facts (new research from Apr 2019). Podcast Insights. https://www.podcastinsights.com/podcast-statistics/
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