Hello, and welcome back to pod land. I am joined today by Laura Ivy she's director of research at Edison research. Now I was fortunate to see Laura in London, recently at the podcast futures, and she gave a brilliant presentation on the infinite dial 2021, the UK report, Laura. Hello, how are you?
Hi. Great. Thank you? Thanks for having me.
Now I was sat with well-paid and we were really impressed with your presentation. there's some great stats that came out of it. So I really wanted to get you on to talk about that presentation. It was a UK focus, where is podcasting these days in the UK, and maybe generally.
So we've done the infinite dial for several years in the United States. And in the past few years, we have data now on Canada and Australia. most recently, South Africa, but last fall, we did an infinite dial UK. And as part of that, we did look at podcasting in the UK but what we're seeing overall is, a. Technology that was very much skewed towards men. We're now seeing much more of a balance and, looking at podcasts listeners in the states, we are looking at almost a 50, 50 splits men in.
We know that can be a different story when we look at maybe content creators. But if you're talking just about listeners, even monthly listeners, people who listen regularly, we're seeing that about almost half of them are women now, which is very much an increase in change in the past few years.
how does that roll out with younger listeners as well?
So we're finding that with younger listeners, we do have a nice percentage. of, younger listeners let's say 1234 who spent a lot of time with podcasts. And what we know about people who listen to podcasts is they listen to them. a lot, but the reach is definitely high with young people.
Maybe, if we look a few years back, there was a perception that podcasts would be sort of along the lines of audio books might have an older audience, might be more technology focused or interest focus might be a little more dry. And we're finding out that young people have really leaned into the medium and podcasts are a very effective way to reach young people.
And I was surprised when I found my 22 year old daughter actually prefer to listen to podcasts than listen to radio. We were traveling somewhere together and she said, oh, let me just put this podcast on. I had no idea that she listened to podcasts at all.
Well, we were sharing one day. internally we have a podcast club at Edison research, so we listened to a series or choose a podcast and we debrief just like you would a book club. And one of the younger. Team members that Edison, mentioned, he said, I really enjoy listening to podcasts on my telephone. but he would access the podcast through whatever source, potentially YouTube, but he would listen to it on his smart television. And that's how he listened at home.
And that is not how I would consume the service, but. You know, we're at home. We got sent home during quarantine. We are exposed to these different devices. We're spending more time than our computers, not just our phones. So we have different ways to listen and young people explore all those ways.
we'll come back and talk about devices. later on in this interview, but how's the UK doing compared to, the English speaking countries, how's it doing against Canada, Australia, and America.
so what's interesting about it is, if you look at the awareness, so in the UK, how many people are familiar with podcasts? that number is, very high. it's a little over 70% If you look at people who listen, 59% have ever listened to a podcast in the UK, which is a couple of points higher than the U S. The U S number is 57. The Australia numbers, 60, the Canada numbers, 57. And that you can number is 59.
So exactly on par with, have you ever listened to a podcast with these other English speaking countries? And then when you look at monthly listening, it's exactly the same as the U S. So that number is a 41%. So 41% of those in the UK. and we're looking at a population of 16 plus. And then we're comparing that to the U S population 16 plus 41% of our monthly podcast listeners. So right on par what is a little bit lower in the UK? It's not quite caught up yet is the weekly listeners.
So those would be the most regular podcasts listeners in the UK. And that's about 25% of the population in the UK versus 29% in the U S
We've talked a little bit about gender splits, age splits and country splits. Can we look at our device? because one of the things that you focus on is what you call share of air. and one of the conversations you and I had, post your presentation was, where is the attention. Graph skewing now. So you know, we've got TV, we've got radio, we've got audio books, we've got podcasts. We've got Netflix. We can't watch everything and listen to everything. So where does podcasting in that spectrum fed?
Is it growing? is it flat-lining or is it stagnating?
Well, as far as overall listening and we're talking about device, so what, where we're listening to podcasts, that's what we want to talk about. so as far as where we're listening to podcasts, and I'm looking at some of our share of ear, the time we spend with podcasts. If we look at the overall, and this is us data. So unfortunately I don't have UK data to share with you on that.
But if we look at the U S data, overall about 5% of our daily audio time is spent with podcasts and that's looking at everybody 13 plus. Now, if we hone in on just the people who are podcast listeners, many people have never listened to a podcast. I think our UK number is maybe 41% have never listened, which is hard for us to believe who are in a podcast world, but of those who do they spend 25% of their time listening. So they're listening a lot of the time.
but as far as actual devices, I can speak to overall consumption, not just podcast consumption, but, overall consumption. We're finding maybe smart speakers. Aren't delivering what we thought they would be delivering at this point in time. we found that when people were again, put home with quarantine, we're seeing people listening a little more at home on computers. we know that mobile listening. is ubiquitous.
So we have people listening on their mobile phones everywhere, but smart speakers just aren't pulling their weight yet for several reasons,
what reasons do you think Laura.
so if you look at overall listening about 4%, I think of the audio that we listened to during the day is on a smart speaker. People who own smart speakers tend to own more than one. we did a smart audio report with NPR in the states and we uncovered skills that people use on their smart speakers. And it seems that even as our numbers of smart speakers were acquiring, have gotten bigger, our skill range hasn't so right. A lot of us still use it for.
timers and our kitchen, or, asking a question or doing a calculation or an alarm of some sort. I'm a terrestrial radio listener. I listen to my radio through my smart speaker. One of my many, I also listen to podcasts through my smart speaker as a news source, but it just hasn't seemed to translate to the volume. So if we have, It's 30% of people, only a smart speaker. We do not have that proportion of listening, coming through a smart speaker.
discovery is big at some point it's just a black box. Sometimes it's difficult to pinpoint exactly what you need or exactly what you want. And sometimes it helps to have a screen. So we found through the smart audio report that people who have smart speakers with screens sometimes maybe find it easier to discover a skill and utilize things. So we just, haven't seen smart speakers translate the volume of listening.
Yeah, I I know James, who I do pod lamb with has his daily pod news. And, he does that as a, smart speaker skill as well, and I think he said in the past that he skews heavier towards Google smart speakers and Alexa, which I never understood. but that I think was his data. the thing about it, and I think we were talking about it before we started recording. skills are just badly done by Amazon. And, I gave the example that my radio skill, somebody else named a skill, the same as my radio skill.
So then we had this conflict with my listeners and their listeners trying to get to the same or different stations, but, having the same name, but Amazon didn't do anything to stop either skill, being loaded, even, I couldn't. Edison research.com for example, and then still having a website, but somehow I can have my river radio skill and someone else can do it. And I could probably have Edison research as a skill, an Amazon in their beauty. Wouldn't stop me.
It's funny because I was an early adopter to smart speakers. I'm a big fan. I even bought the echo for the vehicle. but I do know that sometimes not knowing, what to say, not knowing what to ask. it is a discovery issue. and I know podcasting not to draw the analogy, but podcasting has the same problems. There's just a lot there to weed through what do I want, what do I need? And then do I have time to consume that thing? And, do I just default back to what's easiest?
Yeah. Which is the thing when you get in a car often is just turn the radio on. So radio still holds that cache because mainly it's the simplicity of radio.
it is for the most part. And, although maybe the auto industry is producing products that don't make it quite so simple to reach those terrestrial stations. But that is one place that we did notice. and I just pulled the piece of data from the presentation that for audio sources ever used in car, the UK and the U S are very much on par when it comes to AMFM radio. 72% of.
Sample-based who've driven a ride in the car last month have used AMFM radio in car that's in the UK compared to 75% of the U S so virtually the same, but for podcasts, very different. The is much higher in the U S. 30% of those car riders or drivers in the U S age 18 plus listen to podcasts in car versus only 15% of the UK. So those podcasts aren't being consumed in car in the UK to the degree they are in the U S.
I'd say the younger generations, natural inclination when they get into a car is to find a cable, plug their phone in and go to Spotify. that's where they go. Whether they listen to a podcast, I'm not sure, but they certainly don't listen to radio.
So we look at share V or share of your measures, this, and we do know that, in the in-car environments, Radio overwhelmingly has a big share of ear, but the younger we go and we slice the demos, the younger we get, the more we see the streaming slides pop up in the terrestrial radio, go down. We also see, satellite radio that is clearly where they shine is in cars as well. but it'll be interesting to see.
You have the technology changes so people can access these things because young people typically drive older vehicles, So they don't have access to, some of those infotainment systems that older people who have more disposable income have access to in newer cars.
Now you recently came up with a wonderful term called super listeners. What is a super listener?
I guess some people may consider themselves more super than others, I've been regaled with tales of people who listen to just a lot of podcasts, but this is relating to podcasts. and the way that Edison research has defined it is you listen to at least five hours. A podcast per week. And I know some people just bury that statistic. They far exceed the five, but that is what puts you in a super listener category. So we, just released a study on people who are super listeners to podcasts.
And he's that? Male, female old, young, black, white where's that super listeners skew.
we talked about the gender split a little bit about how now we're looking at a very even split. When you look at just people who are monthly podcast listeners, how that's a lot more, even now it's very nicely split between men and women. If you look at super listeners, it skews much more male. So if you are a super listener, you are much more likely to be. Male. as far as age, super listeners I think it's 50% are 25 to 44. So a big chunk in the 25, 44 age range.
and then as far as ethnicity, they, are 72% Majority white, but also, not too far off from the population representation. Again, this is a US-based study to be clear on that. So they're much more likely to be male.
The other interesting trend I wanted to get your view on was, subscription versus advertising. advertising, supporting podcasting is currently obviously very heavily the way that most people do it, we've seen Spotify and apple bring in subscriptions. We've seen other services appear like Satoshis and micro payments and value for value. Oh, we seeing a movement to tall towards, a significant number of people paying for podcasting, or is it just, the ones and 2% still.
so what I can speak to on that is just what we can observe about overall. Audio subscription and the willingness for people to pay in whatever increments we know that we're very attuned and we're very accustomed to, doling out our few dollars every month for various things, whatever it is now. and we know that, our latest share of your study shows that we are at about almost 50% of Americans subscribed to some sort of paid audio.
So we're used to paying for things now, are we used to paying for podcasts? I don't have that data. I can't answer that question. I can tell you though, that the super listeners we interviewed a majority of them said they would absolutely be willing to pay if their favorite podcasts got moved to a service where they had to pay to hear it.
Joe Rogan effect.
So the Mo So if you were loyal to a podcast, you, what we found was these listeners said, if it moves and I have to pay for it, I would be willing to do that. So I can definitely tell you that. and people who listen to podcasts, a lot of podcasts, these super listeners are much more likely to have paid. Streaming services paid audio at these premium subscriptions. but yeah, people have said they and people have, demonstrated I'm willing to follow and I'm willing to pay a little bit for that.
now one of the things that surprised me, we've talked a little bit about it, but I wanted to come back to in more detail, where people consume podcasting and most of us think of apple podcasts or third party, podcasting apps. One of the things you came out with at the presentation was. That it's YouTube. That's the best place for discovery and the place where it's most consumed. And again, James has said this frequently, but you have to start the bucket up.
So it's a lot to get your head around. I think particularly for those of us who were of an age where YouTube wasn't a joke, many years ago we thought, oh, YouTube, it's silly. It's the cat videos. It's whatever. And you would have been around long enough to see it become this force of content delivery. That appeals to all ages that is easily accessed. Everywhere.
And, what we had found is that, people who, super listeners and really, and others, I think that the data that I was talking about was super listener data in this particular instance. But in looking at super listeners, we found that, over half of them currently listen to podcasts through YouTube, 55% of them do. And. That is surprising to people who have maybe only ever used that purple square on their phone to access their apple podcast. Now that's more of a, like a reach number, right?
So that's 55% have used YouTube. If you ask the question, what service do you use most often among the super listeners? It's Spotify by a couple of points. So 23% of them use Spotify the most, but 20% of them use YouTube the most. and in thinking of how we've found this statistic in other studies, we did the spoken word audio report. That's the report we did with NPR. And we found that particularly young listeners back to our young listeners for just a minute.
those aged 1834 multicultural audiences, they're much more likely to say they've used video based. Like YouTube, to discover spoken word content. So they're using it to access the, using it for discovery and thinking about how easy, if you have been on YouTube and consumed podcasts or any kind of content, how easy it is to flow to the next piece, to find what you're looking for. It's all right there. And it's easy to see.
If you look at some of the U S data from the infinite dial half the women and 62% of the men said they are currently listening to podcasts on YouTube. So we have to recognize the fact that, even though we think of it As a video service and as a place where we watch things, it's audio consumption. And here's another funny thing about YouTube. We measure location, right in share of your measures, location, and people have been reporting you listening to YouTube and their cars, and that may feel.
Counter intuitive, raw, And safe, not good. but if you're, maybe you're a car ride or maybe you turn it on and put the phone down and just let it play. But people are listening to YouTube music and they're consuming music through YouTube, and they're also doing it in car.
I suppose that's what Spotify is hoping is that flip over, I'm listening to my favorite band and then, oh, look, I'll just listen to a podcast as well. so consumption of air time on platform is what they're hoping to keep you there, but it seems that YouTube has that.
Well, I am sure they are hoping to capture that and find a way, because I guess we know spoken word has taken off. We know. Again, particularly young people and multicultural audiences have increased consumption and interest in spoken word, and you can look at their need for connection, and we can look at how much of that could have been driven.
Now we're just surmising this part, but I knew our qualitative research when we do interviews with younger people and they talk about why they want to seek out spoken word. It has to do with human connection, not being alone. you know, just learning something about themselves, things like that. And I'm sure every streaming service is trying to figure out how to translate that into keeping listeners. How do we keep them listening to whatever content we're offering?
word. Sticky. As I like to say.
Definitely. Definitely.
Now last two questions. the infinite dial, how do you do your research? I just, can you reveal some of the secrets behind the curtain? How do you guys do this stuff?
I can reveal some of the secrets behind the curtain. so mean it's pretty simple. we do, we do different ages, in the various countries that we do So the us is, let's say. 12 plus I think we did 16 plus in the UK. but in the UK we did interview a thousand people. there were telephone interviews. We did, respondents aged 16. Plus we do a random digit dial sample. what's important about the way that we reach the people. and this is very important is this is not.
I survey of people who are only online. This is also includes people who are lightly online. And that is important when you're measuring behaviors that include online consumption. So it's important to reach people who have land lines. Aren't many of them, but it is important to reach landline people and, mobile phones. And then we do, the survey that way. And then we project it to the national sample through way to data.
but it is important because when you do an online survey and it's only online and you're measuring online behavior, you tend to get numbers or you will get numbers that are, inflated or show some behaviors that, you need to measure. All people, not just online people.
Now, one question I did ask you, this is my wishlist to Edison research is you measure from the consumption side, the people who consume content, but I was asking you, do you have a skew? Demographic of hosts, male, female, black and Latino. Cause that would be really interesting as a data point to understand not only who's listening, but who's creating.
that is just a phenomenal question and it would really provide some insight into the whole. Podcasts ecosystem. we did an event yesterday that was a black podcast listener report networking event. It was a follow-up to some data and we had so many content creators, men and women, and it was just a really great way to see the creators face to face. I suppose we can back into that number a bit based on an analysis of who showed up in the rancor.
So if we look at our, let's say top 50, or we look at all the podcasts through our podcast, consumer tracker, we could pull a number and analyze it that way. and that, that is a subscription product. So we don't have data that we're sharing with that, but we could back into it that way and do an analysis of creators. We haven't done that. I think that is a wonderful question. I'm going to pass your wishlist question along because we could very much benefit from seeing what's out there.
You know, looking at the rankers that the top 50 and the top 10 by different demos gives us some insight into what people are. Consuming. We know, men have a little more politics and money in that top list. Women have more true crime, but it would be really nice to get an idea of what the creator ecosystem looks like.
James is, put his pod news rank her up for February. it says in this 90 day period, pod news gave 203 mentions or 39% to women and 317 mentions to men in the previous period. So the gender split was 37%, but that's just key mentions that clearly is. Hosting again. I just think it's something that, I think would be an interesting understanding of cause then once you understand the number you can ask, why is the number skewed one way or the other? If whatever the result is,
And I will say we did have two female hosts in podcasts. Move up in the top 10. we had office ladies move up, call her daddy, moved up a couple of spots from our last rancor that came out. So it's interesting to keep a watch on that as well, but you're absolutely right.
Laura. Thank you so much for your time. Great insights from you guys at Edison. I know at podcast movement and you're going to be launching the, 2022 infinite dial, which is exciting. where can people find you? Where can they find more about Edison research?
thank you for having me on it was wonderful to do the presentation at podcast futures last week. Thank you for attending. you can find [email protected]. We have our public studies are all posted there. So any of the data we just talked about easily accessible. You can just Google, infinite dial UK, and you will find the data that we just talked about. And then at podcast movement, which is coming up.
on March 23rd, we will be releasing new infinite dial data us, and that will be covering online audio listening, podcasting, social media, traditional media. So a lot coming out on March 23rd. So thank you.
Thanks a lot. Laura, take care.