Podcasts Q2 2020: Spotify takes an early lead

MIDiA has just published its latest Podcast report, Podcasts Q2 2020: Spotify Takes an Early Lead. In it we present data from MIDiA’s quarterly survey that presents a comprehensive view of podcast user behaviour, who podcast listeners are, how it stacks up against radio and music streaming listening and which platforms listeners are going to for their podcasts. One of the key findings of the 3,000 word report is that Spotify is now firmly established as the most widely used podcast platform. 

Spotify is now the leading destination platform for podcast users. In Q2 2020 42% of podcast listeners used Spotify, 10 points ahead of Apple in second place. This does not necessarily mean that it yet leads in terms of volume of listens, but it is the platform that the largest share of regular podcast listeners visit. Spotify was second in Q4 2019, so it is a rapid ascension for the streaming platform, leaving Apple trailing significantly. Google in third place may surprise some in the podcast sector, as it is renowned for being a small player. However, MIDiA has tweaked the wording of the question repeatedly over the last nine months, making it absolutely clear what we are referring to, and the result is always the same. This suggests either a) a large number of people use the app but have much lower listening patterns than users of other platforms, or b) Android users are somehow less clear on what podcast apps they use than iOS users. We think the latter is unlikely.

Early adopter behaviour shapes the market

Varying levels of podcast usage among users is however very likely as we are at such an early stage of market development (just 14% of consumers listen to podcasts regularly). This means that podcasts are at the ‘critical mass’ phase of adoption, where usage starts to move from early adopters towards the mainstream. As a consequence, heavy-usage early adopters, which Spotify podcast users tend to be, have particularly heavy behaviour and skew the overall numbers. This illustrates the supreme importance of measuring audience behaviour like MIDiA does, rather than relying solely on analytics – which are great for understanding volumes of listens, but less useful for understanding audiences. 

This early adopter skew also means that the content that resonates well with podcast users now will not necessarily be the right content to pull in more mainstream audiences, nor is it likely to be the right content mix for a longer-term strategy.

Podcasts are still small scale for now, but have vast potential

Podcasts are still small scale and far outweighed by radio. In fact, overall audience penetration has not shifted much during the last six months, though volumes of podcast listens have increased. So, existing podcast users are listening to new podcasts, creating new ‘day parts’ in their lockdown behaviours.

Spotify’s podcast strategy is dominating thinking in the podcast space at the moment, and with good reason considering its heavy investment. However, with the ad market softening, and Spotify relying primarily on ads to monetise podcasts, it will be some time before it can recoup its investment. Nevertheless, Spotify is betting big. It sees the opportunity in competing for radio listening to be a much bigger move than music alone. It is betting that podcasts will take radio out of radio, just like Netflix took TV out of TV.

BBC Sounds represents a podcast blueprint for radio broadcasters 

Spotify will not, however, find all radio companies bending to its will. In the UK, the BBC Sounds app illustrates how powerful a strongly integrated app and content strategy can be, with the app the second-most used podcast platform in the UK. Crucially, the vast majority of Sounds users that are also podcast users, use the app for podcasts. This contrast strongly with other broadcaster apps. For example, in the US, only a small minority of NPR’s app users that are podcasts listeners use the app for podcasts.

The experience of BBC Sounds illustrates that broadcasters can be a major force in the future of podcasts, but that they cannot rely solely on the strength of their content and programming. Without the tight technology integration that Spotify employs, broadcasters will find themselves looking more like NPR than they do the BBC.

If you are a radio broadcaster exploring how to innovate your audio and tech strategy to compete in this new marketplace, then get in touch with stephen@midiaresearch.com to see how MIDiA can help.

Spotify AND Apple Lead Podcasts – It’s All Down to How You Measure It

The podcast platform data from MIDiA’s Q4 tracker is in. These are the high-level findings:

• Apple still leads overall: A recent report showed that Spotify has become the leading podcast platform in the US. MIDiA’s Q4 Tracker data shows that among regular podcast users, Spotify is very nearly but not quite the leading platform in the US, just trailing Apple’s podcast app – though the difference is so small that it could be within margin of survey error. However, when Apple Music is factored into the equation, Apple remains the leading platform.
• Spotify the leading single platform: In terms of single platforms – i.e. considering Apple Music and Apple’s podcast apps separately – Spotify has quickly established a leading position across all markets surveyed except the US. Spotify is betting big on podcasts, but this bet is as defensive as it is offensive. Spotify knows that its users over index for podcasts – 28% use them weekly, compared to 15% of overall consumers. If it did not go big with podcasts it was always at risk of losing share of ear as podcasts grew, in the same way Amazon lost CD buyers to Apple’s iTunes. It has taken Amazon years to start winning back the spend of its music consumers, but it could tolerate that inconvenience as it makes most of its money elsewhere. Spotify has no such luxury.
• National broadcasters faring well: Radio broadcasters lost their younger music audiences to streaming. They were not going to sit back and let streaming services then go and steal their older, spoken word audiences without a fight. In many respects, radio broadcasters have a greater chance of being power players in podcasts because their decades of programming expertise will take time for streaming services to learn. With music, they were sitting on the shoulders of a decade of experience learned by Apple’s iTunes. The three national broadcaster apps we tracked (BBC Sounds, NPR One, CCBC Listen) had mixed fortunes, but all have solid adoption. None more so than BBC Sounds, which is the second-most widely used single platform in the UK – a testament to the BBC’s sometimes controversial Sounds strategy. However, one major factor is that broadcaster podcast app users are much older than streaming service podcast users, and indeed of dedicated apps like Acast and Stitcher. This shows that broadcasters are doing a good job of bringing their older audiences over to podcasts but are not yet making podcasts an entry point for younger users lost to streaming.

These findings come from MIDiA’s quarterly tracker survey and will be presented in much more detail in MIDiA’s forthcoming ‘Podcast Platforms’ report.

If you are not already a MIDiA client and would like to learn more about how to get access to MIDiA’s research, data and analysis, then email stephen@midiaresearch.com