Podcasts: Is Anyone Listening?

If you wish, you can listen to the articles eMarketer has published today on your iPod. But will you?

Forrester Research says the odds are against it. In its new report, “Podcasting Hits the Charts,” the firm claims only 1% of online households in North America regularly download and listen to podcasts. Not many.

Forrester projects just 700,000 households in the US in 2006 will use podcasting, and that this will grow to 12.3 million households by 2010.

Although other sources have put the figure as high as 80 million by 2010, eMarketer, in its recently-released report, Podcasting: Who’s Tuning In?, projected a very similar audience of 15 million by 2010.

Nevertheless, the Forrester numbers sparked quite a response.

Regardless of the fact that podcast downloads are available at tens of thousands of sites all over the Internet, Charlene Li, principal author of the Forrester report, was quoted in MarketWatch as saying, “It’s been months since I synced my iPod, because I’m not commuting anymore and I just don’t have time to listen.”

The response was immediate. WebProNews quoted PodTech.net founder John Furrier: “I don’t know what planet Charlene is on these days but her report on podcast adoption is way off base. I don’t know why she would come out with these low numbers. My only guess is that it’s typical old school research method — take a handful of people off the street and ask them if they know about podcasting…that might make her report justified.”

On his own site, Mr. Furrier later modified his remarks, saying Ms. Li was “a very solid analyst.” But reiterating that he didn’t know “why or how she would come out with these low numbers.” He estimates that around 15-20 million people are accessing podcasts on iTunes.

In Ms. Li and Forrester’s defense, the report also went on to say, “We expect MP3 adoption to be almost 11 million households in the US this year, and grow to 34.5 million households by 2010. So that means in four years, about a third of those MP3 owners will be listening to podcasts on those devices. Podcasting will get easier and the content will get better, but it will all take time.”

In both the pro and con podcasting rants, in blogs and publications, one point of agreement did emerge. While the future of original podcast programming may be in doubt, the ability to time-shift material from other channels — radio, news, webcasts — will create great a growing, perhaps vast, audience.

In fact most of the disagreement simply comes down a difference of definition. The low numbers, such as Forrester’s, refer to ‘active’ or ‘regular’ listeners (usually defined as those who listen at least one a week). The higher numbers refer to those who download podcasts at all.

For more information at http://www.emarketer.com