Way fewer people are creating new podcasts these days

According to a Listen Notes report, new podcast creation dropped by 80% from 2020 to 2022

Image by 愚木混株 Cdd20 from Pixabay

As per a report from podcast search engine Listen Notes, the number of newly created podcasts had decreased by 80% from 2020 to 2022 worldwide.

Here are some key points:

• 219,178 new podcasts were created in 2022 as opposed to 337,063 in 2019.
• The peak was 1,019,2072 newly created podcasts in 2020 during the first waves of the COVID-19 pandemic (when many people stayed home due to government-sanctioned restrictions).
• 2022 saw the publication of 26.1 million new episodes, up from 18.1 million in 2019. Yet, those numbers fare poorly compared to 2020 and 2021 figures (30,130,431 and 29,513,070 respectively).

Are podcast creators giving up? The above figures certainly suggest many have. The time and effort it takes to maintain a podcast property is non-negligible and it’s probably harder to start from one scratch these days than let’s say five years ago due to the existing competition.

This story was first published on The PhilaVerse (my Substack newsletter).