New podcasts decline with “80% drop over two years” – new data shows

New podcasts are on the decline, according to data provider Chartr.

Analysts of international production numbers have revealed that 219,000 podcasts will appear in 2022 – a sharp drop from last year when 729,000 new titles were released. This was already less than 2020, the height of the pandemic lockdown, when 1,109,000 new podcasts were launched.

Kate Taylor, founder of the network Feast Collective, which supports freelance podcasters, told the UK Guardian:

“It feels like we’re in that ‘difficult second album’ moment and of course there’s a lot to worry about. I would say it is now more difficult to get sponsorships and more difficult to make investors understand how much money it takes to get something right.”

To put things into perspective, The Guardian notes that there are currently an estimated three million podcasts available around the world, most of them in America and Brazil.

Established titles, on the other hand, continue to create new content, and week after week the same titles appear on podcast charts as Apple.

Two weeks ago, a panel of podcast managers from Britain’s Royal Television Society said that while it was difficult to get into the important top ten of those charts, podcasting’s flexibility in terms of subject matter and episode length compensated for the relatively low price practical and the fact that anyone with a microphone can do it still makes it an attractive proposition. The UK podcast industry is estimated to be worth £40 million ($48.2 million) by 2021.

They added that while there’s no real money to be made from podcasts themselves, the intellectual property they generate could also eventually become valuable for adaptation by film and TV producers.

Darrell Brown, CEO of podcast production company What’s the Story, told the panel:

“Television doesn’t move as fast as podcasts. There is a traffic light phase, an option period, rights are locked in for a while, which may take a little longer.”