U.S. Latinos are Primed for Podcasts – The Non-Listener [REPORT Part 2]

Forty-four percent of U.S. Latinos have never listened to a podcast and 20% have not listened to a podcast in the last month, but a new study finds that 67% of U.S. Latinos who don’t listen to podcasts already listen to spoken word audio.

The reason most U.S. Latinos are not listening to podcasts? Seventy percent of those who aren’t monthly podcast listeners say that podcasts ‘just aren’t for them.’” The next most popular reasons: 48% say they don’t have enough time to listen and 47% say that podcasts are too long.

Some reasons U.S. Latinos might listen to podcasts? Forty-three percent of monthly podcast non-listeners say they would be interested if there were podcasts available on the topics they are interested in, 33% said they would be interested if podcasts were easier to discover, and 28% said they would be interested if a well-known personality they liked hosted a podcast.

Further education around podcast access and subscription is needed: 23% of U.S. Latino podcast non-listeners say they don’t really understand what a podcast is, 29% say they are not so sure how to listen to a podcast, and 31% say they don’t really know how to find a podcast. Thirty-one percent say they have to pay to subscribe to a podcast.

U.S. Latinos who don’t listen to podcasts are more likely to be women, and more likely to be age 55+. U.S. Latino monthly podcast listeners are 58% Men, 42% Women v. 44% Men, 56% Women for non-listeners, and monthly podcast listeners are 8% age 55+ v. 30% age 55+ for non-listeners.

This new research shows 58% of U.S. Latino podcast non-listeners use YouTube weekly for music listening, and according to The U.S Latino Podcast Listener Report released in July, YouTube is the top platform for podcast listening among monthly podcast listeners. This means video, particularly YouTube, will be an important point of entry for U.S. Latinos to podcasting.

Findings from the study debuted in a webinar on September 16, presented by Gabriel Soto, Director of Research at Edison Research, and Elsie Escobar, She Podcasts Co-founder and Community Manager at Libsyn.

“Since many Latino podcast non-listeners already listen to spoken word audio, and so many use YouTube and streaming audio platforms for other content, they are poised for adoption of the platform,” said Soto. “Today we saw that Latino non-listeners expressed joy in listening to podcasts for the first time, and that’s another reason Latinos have adopted the platform at such a high rate.”

According to Escobar, “Bilingual or multi-lingual content is and will become more and more important to grow Latino non-podcast listeners. Bilingual podcasts are an opportunity to re-connect and re-build our identities as we are, plus create bridges for all of our Latino and Hispanic experiences within the U.S. and beyond.

To download Part 2 of the report, CLICK HERE.

To download Part 1, CLICK HERE.