2016: The Year that Podcasting Explodes in Popularity

We’ve got about 3 million downloads of 200+ episodes of our marketing podcast to date and it continues to grow. So much so that we invested in our own podcast studio in downtown Indianapolis.

From its humble beginnings in 2003, podcasting has become an unstoppable force in content marketing and shows no signs of stopping — the number of active podcasts has skyrocketed since 2008. Jon Nastor

What’s Changing that Podcasts are Resurging?

Reverse a few years and consuming podcasts was a complex task. If you had an iOS device, you’d have to dock and synchronize your device with iTunes after subscribing to the podcasts you liked. However, as devices have advanced and broadband connections have become commonplace, streaming podcasts has become the norm. Apple has the podcasts app and there’s also Stitcher, TuneIn, BlogTalkRadio, and mobile apps (like ours) can integrate players easily.

Not only is consumption changing, so is behavior. Just as people will sit and watch Netflix for hours, we’re finding that our listeners will listen to hours of our podcast in a single sitting. Combine this with new audio interfaces standard in 2016 cars that can consume podcasts… and on-demand audio is going to take off like we’ve never seen before!

[box type=”note” align=”aligncenter” class=”” width=”90%”]If you want to find the best Marketing Podcasts available on the web, be sure to check out Jay Baer’s site MarketingPodcasts.com[/box]

On the production side, having a high-end studio used to only be available with radio stations or recording studios. But the availability of high-end gear to the average user is unbelievable nowadays. Our podcast studio is equipped with:

Shure SM7B Vocal Dynamic Microphones – an industry standard for vocal recording.
Behringer XR18 Digital and Wireless Channel Mixer – a portable mixer with phone, tablet, or laptop application wireless real-time controls.
Focusrite Clarett 8Pre 18-In/20-Out Thunderbolt Audio Interface with 8 Clarett Mic Preamps – a beautiful Thunderbolt interface where we can bring everything, including Skype calls, into our shows.

All of this, of course, are in a studio that’s been engineered for sound with the mixers professionally dialed in remotely by Behringer engineers (at no cost). We’re now building out a new podcast table with rack mounts to better organize and hide the array of cords everywhere. And – truth be told – we went wayyy over on the equipment (and budget) requirements. If you’re a lone podcaster, a USB Apogee microphone with a pop filter, Call Recorder for Skype, along with Garageband or Audacity can do the job!

Media consumption is showing signs of being dramatically changed by both technology and by new paradigms. Mobile’s increasing utility as ‘the first screen,’ as well as the rise of alternative content forms, such as podcasts and ‘bingeable’ content from on-demand video services is subverting the myth that our attention spans are shorter. Tom Webster, Edison’s Vice President of Strategy

If there are no popular podcasts in your industry, this is the time to start one! It’s all up from here!