The Significant New Podcasting Stat Hiding In Plain Sight

In last week’s debut of the Infinite Dial 2019 report from Edison Research and Triton Digital, we published some eye-popping numbers on the growth of podcasting. The growth in both monthly and weekly podcast consumers is the largest percentage point increase we’ve seen in the 15 years we have covered the medium in the Infinite Dial series.

The increase in weekly listeners is certainly notable, from 17% of Americans ages 12+ in 2018 to 22% in 2019, which translates to an estimated 14 million new humans making podcasts a weekly habit.

But there is one number that didn’t change. It stayed perfectly flat, in fact: the number of podcasts per week that these new regular listeners consume. Last year, weekly podcast listeners told us they consumed an average of seven podcasts per week. This year? Exactly the same. Seven. You might not think there is much of a story here — but in fact, it’s one of the more consequential numbers in the entire study.

“Flat” might seem like a non-story, but if podcasting were a mature medium, we actually would have expected the average number of podcasts per week to go down. Why? Think about the people who have been listening to podcasting for well over 10 years — they are pretty hardcore! They’ve listened to a LOT of shows, and podcasts have been an important part of their…