It's fair to say that 2020 brought some changes to how we live our lives, (and the award for understatement of the century goes to...) but, have podcasts been one of them?
Maybe there's something about that BBC Sounds opening that scratches a certain itch, or perhaps its just the breaking up of the daily monotonous walk that has me reaching for the headphones more and more these days, but it seems as if people everywhere are increasingly finding themselves listening to podcasts. I caught up with Hannah Sirkett, a sixth form student, to ask if she too is listening more.
For her, she thinks that "the increased walking and spending more time in nature may have given people a greater opportunity to listen to podcasts", and also thinks that having more time on our hands may have helped this too.
According to InPublishing, The Spring 2020 MIDAS Survey has revealed that over 10 million people are listening to a podcast every week in the UK, approximately 18% of the adult population, and up 4% YOY since 2019.
Despite this however, Hannah says that since getting back to school after lockdown her podcast listening has decreased, is there a chance that this growth could be shortlived, and be but another pandemic coping mechanism?
Well, according to Apple Podcasts, no.
As of April 2021, it reports 48 million episodes on its platform, compared to 18.5 million episodes in 2018. The stats show that the rise of the podcast is far from being over, or even reaching it's peak.
