Podcasting and Audiobooks Industry

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Podcasting Industry

The podcasting industry is growing at a fast rate. Deloitte predicted that the industry willl grow by 30 percent to hit $1.1 billion in 2020. Additionally, the company projected that by 2025, the podcasting industry will be worth more than $3.3 billion. According to Statista, there were 424.2 million podcast listeners worldwide in 2022. That number is projected to hit 504.9 million in 2024This source is not linking to a Deloitte source?Why is there this huge $95B market size number?. The US is by far the largest podcasting market in the world. In 2022, the number of active podcast listeners in the US grew by 21.95% year-over-year to 100 million. Podcasts makes revenue from different streams which include advertising, content marketing, merchandise, listener donations, subscriptions, events, and branded podcasts. Even though podcasting revenue breakdown into different segments are not publicly available, podcasting ad revenue makes up the largest portion of podcast revenue. WARC had projected that podcasts will generate $2.6 billion in advertising revenue in 2022. Similarly, a May 2022 report by Interactive Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers

indicated that the US podcasting business generated $1.4 billion in advertising revenue in 2021 and was forecasted to exceed $2 billion in 2022 and $4 billion by 2024. Interestingly, in 2021, the US podcast ad revenue year-over-year growth rate significantly outperformed the total internet ad revenue growth rate(+35%). On the same note, between 2015 and 2021, the US podcast ad revenue grew by 56% year-over-year on average. 

With more revenue comes more podcasts and content creators. It is estimated that there are over 5 million podcasts in the world. Spotify and Apple indicate that they have over 5 million and 2.5 million podcasts, respectively. However, Listen Notes estimates that there are at least 3 million active podcasts globally. Luminate's Podcast 360 report indicates that listening is the main mode of podcast-consumption. According to the report, 83% of its respondents purely listen to podcasts while 53% like to watch instead. 

Podcasting Market Size

According to the market figures, the worldwide podcasting market will be worth $30.03 billion In 2024 and is expected to increase at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 27.6% between 2023 and 2030.

Taking that CAGR into consideration, the podcast market size would be 38.36 billion in 2025 and 131.13 billion in 2030.

Year	Podcast Industry Market Size
2023	23.56 billion
2024*	30.03 billion
2025*	38.36 billion
2026*	49.03 billion
2027*	62.71 billion
2028*	80.07 billion
2029*	102.53 billion
2030*	131.13 billion

Ad Revenue

IAB May 2023

Despite these macroeconomic factors, U.S. podcast ad revenues showed resilience by growing 26% year-over-year to $1.8 billion. In fact, podcasting continues to be one of the fastest growing digital channels, outpacing the total internet ad market (+11% year-over-year*). Podcasting ad revenues in 2022 were driven by:

• A listenership that continues to expand, diversify, and increase total time spent by seeking authentic content that’s aligned with their niche interests.
• Podcast creators meeting consumer demand in the production of increasingly distinct and engaging content.
• As a result, both existing and new advertisers across multiple ad categories are increasing ad spend.

Revenues are projected to more than double between 2022-2025 to ~$4 billion. On the heels of this product evolution and advertising growth, IAB anticipatesfurther advertiser demand, growth in programmatic buying, advancements in brand safety, and the application of attention measurement to the podcasting ecosystem

Sports (15%), Society & Culture (14%), and Comedy (14%) are now the top revenue-generating content genres, taking the lead frome News and political opinion content (down from 19% to 12%).

IAB 2021

Who are the main podcast players?

The leading podcast players globally are Spotify and Apple. According to a recent Triton report, Spotify is the top podcast player in terms of listeners, with a 38.4% market share. Apple Podcasts follows it with an 11.5% market share. However, when it comes to the number of podcast downloads, Apple leads with a 52.9% market share, followed by Spotify with 11.8%.

Podcast Traction in major companies

The rising podcast revenue of major companies such as Spotify and IHeartMedia is a testimony that the industry is growing. In 2021, Spotify's podcast revenue grew by 300% to reach $215 million. Similarly, IHeartMedia's podcast revenue rose by 149% to hit $253 million. Statista estimates that Spotify's podcast ad revenue in 2021 was $108.9 million. That is a growth rate of 108.62% year-over-year. Additionally, Statista projects that Spotify's podcast ad revenue will reach $414 million by 2024, almost four times the 2021's podcast revenue. Recently, Spotify's CFO Paul Vogel told the Financial Times that the company's podcast revenue in 2022 was "significantly higher." However, he did not disclose the specifics.

Revenue of major podcast companies

	2020	δ	2021
Spotify	$54.75 m	300%	$215m
iHeartMedia	$104.61 m	149%	$253m

Spotify podcast ad revenue from the United States- 2019 to 2024(in million U.S. dollars)

2019	2020	δ	2021	δ	2022(forecasted)	δ	2023(forecasted)	δ	2024(forecasted)	δ
23.7	52.2	120.25%	108.9	108.62%	191.9	76.22%	286.5	49.30%	414	44.50%

What are people listening to?

Triton's report show that the top podcast genres in the US are those touching on news(23%), Comedy(17%), and true crime(15%), as shown by the chart. Below are the most popular podcasts in the US and on Spotify and Apple platforms.

Top 10 podcasts in US based on measurement from Q4 2021 – Q3 2022

According to analysis done by Edison Research between Q4 2021 and Q3 2022, the Joe Rogan Experience is the most popular podcast in the US, followed by Crime Junkie. The Joe Rogan Experience became an exclusive podcast on Spotify in 2020 after the company bought the airing rights for $200 million. Nielsen Q3 2021 media ratings indicated that the Joe Rogan Experience has an average of 11 million viewers per episode. On the other hand, Crime Junkie features on several platforms and is estimated to have 10 million listeners per week. <- Link not working

Rank	Name	Podcaster	Where it is hosted	Average number of listeners
1	The Joe Rogan Experience	Joe Rogan	Spotify	11 million per episode(Q3 2020)
2	Crime Junkie	Ashley Flowers and Brit Prawat	Apple, Spotify and Amazon Music	10 million listeners per week(2022)
3	The Daily	Michael Barbaro	Apple, Spotify and Amazon Music	4 million daily listeners(2020)
4	This American Life	Ira Glass	Apple, Spotify and Amazon Music	2.2 million listeners each week(2019)
5	The Ben Shapiro Show	Benjamin Shapiro	Apple, Spotify and Amazon Music
6	Stuff You Should Know	Charles Bryant & Josh Clark	Apple, Spotify and Amazon Music
7	My favorite Murder	Karen Kilgariff & Georgia Hardstark	Apple, Spotify and Amazon Music	3.75 million listeners per episode(2020)
8	Morbid	Ashleigh Kelly and Alaina Urquhart	Apple, Spotify and Amazon Music
9	Dateline NBC	Keith Morrison	Apple, Spotify and Amazon Music
10	Office Ladies	Angela Kinsey & Jenna Fischer	Apple, Spotify and Amazon Music

Most Popular Spotify Podcasts globally in 2022

Rank	Name	Podcaster
1	The Joe Rogan Experience	Joe Rogan
2	Call Her Daddy	Alexandra Cooper
3	Anything Goes with Emma Chamberlain	Emma Chamberlain
4	Caso 63(All languages)	Julianne Moore and Oscar Isaac
5	Crime Junkie	Ashley Flowers and Brit Prawat

Most Popular Apple Podcasts globally in 2022

Rank	Name	Podcaster
1	Crime Junkie	Ashley Flowers and Brit Prawat
2	The Daily	Michael Barbaro
3	Dateline NBC	Keith Morrison
4	Morbid	Ashleigh Kelly and Alaina Urquhart
5	SmartLess	Will Arnett, Jason Bateman, Sean Hayes
6	This American Life	Ira Glass
7	Up First	Rachel Martin, Steve Inskeep, A Martinez, Leila Fadel, Scott Simon, Ayesha Rascoe
8	Serial	Sarah Koenig
9	The Ben Shapiro Show	Benjamin Shapiro
10	Hidden Brain	Shankar Vedantam

Audiobooks Industry

Like the podcasting industry, the audiobook market is also growing rapidly. Deloitte had forecasted that it would rise by 25% in 2020 to reach $3.5 billion. The United States also leads in terms of the audiobook market share. In 2020, the podcasting market in the US was valued at $1.5 billion and was projected to grow by about 20 to 25% in the next few years. It was followed by China, which was estimated to be worth $1 billion in the same year. That means US and China make up about 75% of the world's audiobook market. When the industry is examined using the number of listeners, Deloitte estimates that at least 73 million Americans listened to audiobooks in 2020. Similarly, more than 350 million Chinese listened to it in the same year.

Audiobooks generate revenue from two streams. These include audiobooks outright and subscriptions. An audiobook outright usually costs between $20 and $30, while a monthly subscription goes for $9-15.

In September 2022, Spotify started offering audiobooks to US users on its platform. According to the company, the site will have over 300,000 titles. But Spotify's attempt to reap from this fast-growing industry started two years ago when it acquired Findaway. During that time, Spotify cited a research report that indicated the audiobook industry would grow to $15 billion by 2027.

Even though podcasts are superior to audiobooks in terms of revenue streams and the number of listeners, audiobooks generate more revenue than podcasts. In 2018, audiobooks generated 33 percent more revenue than audiobooks( $750 million revenue versus $500 million), yet podcast listeners were 60 percent more than audiobook listeners. This has been contributed majorly by the poor monetization of podcasts compared to audiobooks. That is, the majority of podcasts are free to listen to.