Podcast Research · December 9, 2010

The Current State Of Podcasting 2010

By Edison Research

The Current State of Podcasting 2010 is Edison’s fifth annual study of the behaviors, attitudes and consumption habits of the podcast audience in America. This study was originally presented at the Blogworld New Media Expo in Las Vegas on October 15, 2010. This presentation combined previously unreleased data 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 continue to prefer consuming content at their desktop, not on dedicated media players, but mobile phone media consumption is surging.
  • 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.

The Blogworld presentation was a far-ranging look at 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 to take advantage of shifts in the overall media landscape. The presentation is approximately 60 minutes long, and may be viewed or downloaded below. Alternately, you can download the data slides (only) for the The Current State of Podcasting 2010 from Edison Research.

The Current State Of Podcasting from Tom Webster on Vimeo.

Download the 2010 Edison Podcast Study Data Graphs.

How the study was conducted

A total of 1,753 people were interviewed to investigate Americans’ use of digital platforms and new media. From January 25 to February 22, 2010, telephone interviews were conducted with respondents age 12 and older chosen at random from a national sample of Arbitron’s Fall 2009 survey diarykeepers and through random digit dialing (RDD) sampling in certain geographic areas where Arbitron diarykeepers were not available for the survey. Diarykeepers represent 51% of the completed interviews and RDD sampled respondents represent 49% of the completed interviews. The study includes a total of 371 cell phone interviews.

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