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You would think with more free time on their hands people would be listening to podcasts more. That’s not the case, according to Chartable, which analyzes 530 million downloads from thousands of podcasts.
From the data its collected, Chartable says since the coronavirus pandemic set the nation into near lockdown mode both downloads of, and listening to, podcasts are down.
Chartable says it looked at a constant subset of 6,000 podcasts, examining their trailing 7-day downloads compared to a baseline starting on February 15th, when the US had just fifteen confirmed cases of COVID-19. They then compared that download dataset to listening data from Spotify and Apple across the thousands of publishers who aggregate this data with Chartable.
And the company says the trend is clear: “Both downloads and listening began to decline in early March, but listening has dropped off much more than downloads have. This is likely because many podcast apps, like Apple Podcasts, will continue downloading podcast episodes even if they are not actually played.”
Chartable says all genres started declining around the same time. Religion & Spirituality, Arts, TV & Film, and Sports are down 30% or more, while Comedy & News, especially on Apple Podcasts, are down 20%.
There’s much more data from the Chartable report and you can check it out HERE.