Podcasting has been growing rapidly in global markets. As of September 2020, there were more than 1,000,000 podcasts available in the global market, with over 30 million podcast episodes, according to a new report from the News and Media Research Centre at the University of Canberra.

The study, Podcast Trends and Issues in Australia and Beyond: Global Perspectives includes insight from various global contributors. It analysed the data from 40 countries to provide an overview of the global trends in podcasting. In the 40 countries surveyed, 41% of news consumers were listening to podcasts, with Turkey (86%) the highest.

Podcast listening in general is popular in Asian countries (45%) and among the different genres, news podcasts appear to be the most popular genre (22%). In the Philippines (26%), Hong Kong (32%), South We then compared five English-speaking countries.

Korea (27%), and Japan (11%), news podcasts were the most popular podcast genre. Lifestyle podcasts were also popular in Malaysia (23%), Hong Kong (32%), Taiwan (26%), and Singapore (12%).

Japanese and Korean news consumers are more likely to think that podcasts are a more convenient and entertaining way of getting news and information than other forms of media. On the contrary, news consumers in English speaking countries are more likely to listen to podcasts to gain a wider range of subjects and perspectives that they can’t get from existing media.

News podcasts tend to be popular among younger people in the surveyed Asian countries with an exception of South Korea. This is particularly the case in Hong Kong where more than one third of news consumers under the age of 35 (37%) listen to news podcasts. Interestingly, this is not the case in South Korea. Korean news consumers aged 35 or above are more likely to listen to news podcasts.

In Japan and Singapore, those with low levels of education were more likely to listen to news podcasts. However, the opposite is true in other Asian countries such as Hong Kong, South Korea, Taiwan, and Malaysia, as well as in English speaking countries.

South Korean podcast listeners showed different demographic characteristics compared to other countries. South Korean baby boomers are more likely to listen to news podcasts (30%) than the younger cohorts at almost double the rate of Gen Z (18%).

The full report can be found here.

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