Podcasts: Why do we love them so much?

The Golden Years

In 2021 we hear a lot about it being ‘the golden age of podcasts’, in the same way that 30s and 40s is referred to as the golden age of radio.

The historical part is this: studies show that the time we spent listening to radio decreased dramatically with the advent of music streaming in 2016, and took another drop when podcasts came on to the scene in 2019.

The dominance of podcasts over radio grew during 2020. Covid 19 played a part, but a combination of reasons have an influence. Here are a few…

1: Custom media consumption.

Podcast vs Radio is like Streaming Services vs live TV.

Platforms like Netflix have boomed in recent years. Like podcasts, they are pre-recorded and on demand, meaning we can schedule our own viewing.

People buy into the ability to customize their media consumption. This has to do with our schedules being not only busier now, but more unique from one person to the next. We no longer sit down to watch the same show at the same time because we don’t live by the same routines.

With Radio or TV the channel decides what to air and when. With streaming and podcasts we can curate that programming ourselves. There are so many podcasts out there on every imaginable subject. The ability for literally anyone to both create and consume a podcast has fostered a cultural rebellion against being told what media to consume.

2: Lockdown and the Podcast; a love story.

We listened to podcasts a lot more during lockdown.

In the U.S., 18% of adults said they are listening to more podcasts since they started isolating and social distancing. Podcasts have also increased in popularity among millennial and gen z listeners, accounting for a large market.

The influence of lockdown can, one the one hand, be boiled down to us simply having more free time. Boredom made ‘content junkies’ of us all.

But I think it goes deeper than that.

Many of us have been living alone and feeling the effects of isolation. Podcasts offered a sense of companionship, satisfying that social itch to converse and engage with others. A human voice and a bit of escapism can be as effective as a change of scenery when we are in the grips of tedium.

2: Flexibility; a blessing or a curse?

Our schedules are packed. Our lives are saturated with an abundance of media. We’re often too busy to ‘commit’ to a two hour movie, or drop everything we’re doing to focus on a book. The versatility of podcasts has allowed them to wiggle their way into the tiny gaps in our time.

There’s no driving the car while reading a book, or cleaning the house while watching a movie. A podcast though? The audio-only medium goes with you anywhere.

Is this a double edged sword?

A bit of light relief and entertainment whilst contending with all the other demands on our time is a plus. The question is whether this crammed lifestyle itself is healthy...

Demands on our attention are vying for position. The popularity of ever more snappy, short-form content on social media evidences our shortening attention spans. Take the rise of TikTok, (which has now overtaken YouTube, a platform known for longer video content); these three minute videos can be rich, informative, immersive, but without demanding too much commitment of our time.

It’s a mixture of short attention span and guilt. We live in a culture where our time and productivity have the utmost value. This translates into pressuring ourselves to use every second. A podcast is guilt free because it’s in the background to our productive uses of time.

3: The benefits of Stillness

Whilst I am a huge podcast lover, I wonder if we are missing out on the benefits of other content forms. Silence, stillness, a break for our overstimulated brains can be beneficially grounding.

When was the last time you weren’t doing at least two things at once? Seriously?

We are already demonstrating a need for stillness. The rising popularity of meditation and other mindfulness techniques indicate a craving for quietude. Psychology Today suggested back in 2018 that this incline is directly linked to the modern challenges of burnout and stressors associated with technology.

A less rapid form of media can break us out of frantic consumption mode. It’s actually a proven fact that reading reduces stress by up to 68% and does so faster than other techniques like listening to music or drinking tea, according to the University of Sussex.

4: The Nostalgia Factor?

Have you ever heard of the Nostalgia Pendulum?

It’s a phenomenon in which every thirty years (approximately a generation) artists draw inspiration from a meaningful period, often their childhood. This creates a cultural nostalgia for the world of thirty years prior.

An example is the wildly popular show Stranger Things, set in the 1980s, which came out in the mid 2010s. It sprang up amid an 80s nostalgia zeitgeist. With so many creators emulating that decade and influencing one another, we get “a kind of feedback loop” that only emphasizes the nostalgia.

A similar cycle may have something to do with ‘Podcastmania’.

A little over thirty years prior to the birth of the podcast, was the 60s and 70s phenomenon of Pirate Radio. In the same way, creatives and listeners alike rebelled against the sanctioned listening, in this instance taking to offshore stations and the upper floors of city tower blocks to broadcast the stuff people actually wanted to listen to.

A bit like those independent podcasters today, discussing topics you’d never expect to hear on the actual radio, catering to a more specific audience who get to pick and choose their sources.