Podcasting in the Latino Audio Universe

People love to marvel at celestial spectacles that often derive from two or more objects perfectly aligning. If we imagined the audio industry to be a universe, one phenomenon to draw your eye to is the merging point of a booming podcasting platform and a booming Latino population in the United States.

First, it’s important to observe that U.S. Latinos, a group that has grown to 65 million people, spend more time with audio than the non-Latino population.

According to Edison Research’s Share of Ear®, persons 13 or older who identify as Hispanic or Latino spend an average of nearly five hours listening to audio each day, while the non-Latino population consumes 3 hours and 55 minutes — more than a one-hour difference.

In 2014, podcasting was just a blip in the cosmos of Latino audio consumption, accounting for 1% of their approximately five hours of daily audio listening. Fast forward a decade later, and podcasting is now squarely in the U.S. Latino audio orbit: Latinos spend 14% of their time listening to podcasts — a record high and more prominent than podcasting’s 9% share among the non-Latino population.

Latinos are not only listening to podcasts at a rate 14 times higher than a decade ago, but they are also dedicating 35% more of their time to podcasts than the rest of the U.S. population. This surge in podcast consumption, coupled with the fact that the time spent overall with audio has remained relatively unchanged, indicates that podcasts are replacing the time the Latino community spends with other audio sources.

As the podcasting medium and Latino population continue to grow, you can expect their convergence to be the focal point for many audio creators, advertisers, and others as they zero in on this big bang’s impact on the overall audio universe.