The Growth Of The Podcast Industry

The podcast industry has well and truly blossomed over the past two decades. It has become an industry that everyone and they nan want to join in on. With podcasts offering such a wide range of genres as celebrity news, murder mysteries, sports, and even weird history stories, it’s no surprise that it has become a $1 billion industry.

So let’s take a brief look back and see how podcasts changed the digital media world.

Podcasting started way back in 2004 when MTV video jockey Adam Curry paired up with software developer Dave Winer to create a program that enabled users to download Internet radio broadcasts to their iPods, called iPodder. However, it wasn’t until a whole year later when this idea was lifted off the ground and discovered by Apple, who included the program in their iTunes 4.9 update.

Fun fact:

2005 is the year in which “Podcast” is declared “Word of the Year” by the New Oxford American Dictionary.

In 2006, Steve Jobs demonstrated during a Key Note speech how to make a podcast using his software, Garage Band. From this moment the podcast industry escalated, leading English standup comedian, Ricky Gervais to hop on the trend and setting the world record for the most downloaded podcast episodes in 2007.

By 2013 the demand was undeniable - Apple announced 1 billion podcast subscribers.

Fast-forward to 2016 where, according to a Radio Ink study, listeners are downloading over one billion podcasts per month, making it one of the fastest-growing media on the planet.

Bringing us to today where video podcasting has been the latest boom in the podcasting industry. Here we now have the ability to watch our favourite podcaster’s reactions, facial expressions, and set up while listening to the stories or news they have to tell.

What are your predictions for the next podcasting trend? I would love to hear about what you guys come up with!

Thanks for reading!!

carla@socialdirectionsagency.com