Are you curious to know some of the numbers about podcasting? The following were collected from a variety of sources across the web – from blogs, articles, newsletters, podcasts and news releases…what do they mean? That podcasting is growing, going mainstream and will see more growth in the upcoming year.

• 126,000– Podcast ‘shows’on iTunes…(attributed to Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple)
• 1 Billion – podcast episodes downloaded in 2007…(from the Wizzard Media hosting service alone)
• 119 Million– iPods sold since they were first introduced in 2001…(Wikipedia)
• 17,529 – podcast RSS feeds at PODCAST.com (podcast.com is a podcast directory/search/aggregator service)
• 15 Million to 20 Million– podcast listeners in 2007 (estimate based on industry data analysis from Podcast411Blog)
• 265– Canadian podcasts (as listed on Canada Podcasts.ca…23 from CBC + 9 CBC international – non-English)
• 61 – Alberta related podcasts in iTunes (based on a search with alberta in the description

Conclusion?

Based on the wide variance of numbers for some of these categories researched we feel that measuring podcasts is a very difficult thing to do. This makes perfect sense considering that podcasting is new and different and traditional metrics do not apply. Only time will allow the number crunchers the opportunity to develop models for measuring and reporting stats. One interesting number not shown above was the number of podcasts ‘consumed’ – or actually listened to. When the actual file is moved off of a computer to a portable device – no one knows what happens to it. Is it deleted? listened to one time or many times? Listened through to the end? Surveys by the big stats compilers (Nielsen, Pew etc) report different numbers.

What is important that you accept that this is a new medium and that old measurement systems don’t apply. If you have 1, 10, 100 or 1000 subscribers to your podcast you are safe in believing that you have that many pairs of ears listening. Do they make it all the way through your podcast? That’s up to you. Make your episodes something they want to listen to.

Dean Owen