Listening to podcasts is a habit that is taking hold in Spain. The growing trend certified internationally, with countries such as the United States at the forefront, is being replicated in the Spanish market. The second report published by the Ivoox Observatory on listening habits and monetisation of this format indicates that listeners spend twice as much time listening to Spanish-language podcasts as they did in 2021.

The study indicates that listeners spend 9.5 hours a week listening to podcasts, and do so by choosing long episodes, with an average length of 80 minutes. Half of listeners – 50.31% – say they listen to more audio content than last year; 42.6% listen to podcasts daily and 28.12% listen at least once a week.

Podcasting is consumed alone, according to the Ivoox report. 97% of listeners indicate that they consume them unaccompanied and at different times of the day. The morning takes the lead with 58%, followed by evenings (52.56%) and afternoons (51.20%).

Listeners subscribe to 4.5 podcasts on average, and almost 40% of respondents follow between 4 and 10 different podcasts, while 20.76% follow between 10 and 20. Mobile (48.71%) is the most used device for listening to podcasts, ahead of computer (16.92%).

The analysis of listeners shows parity in podcast interest. The female audience represents 42% compared to 58% of men. By age, users between 25 and 64 years old are the most frequent listeners, most of them have a university education (57%) and 79% of them are active at work.

Listeners are turning to podcasts at the same time as certain listening habits are being redefined. For example, 80% of respondents say that data plans are no longer a constraint for mobile listening and 51.24% listen to streaming episodes, compared to 28.79% who download.

71.7% of users highlight the ability to listen to podcasts while doing other tasks, indicating that their motivation is to learn (65.69%), entertain (58.86%), find content that is not available elsewhere (34.01%) or fall asleep (26.1%).

Listeners are increasingly willing to pay

Paying for access to content has also become normalised in this area. The Ivoox report indicates that 57.3% of the audience is willing to pay to help the creator, 3% more than in 2021. The main reason listeners choose to pay is to contribute to creators’ projects (61.61%), followed by enjoying exclusive content (48.52%) and being able to listen without advertising (43.33%).

Direct support from their audience is also the favourite option for podcasters, a modality that iVoox, a pioneer in incorporating fan subscriptions into its platform, has already generated revenues of more than 2.2 million euros for creators.

History podcasts lead the top five favourite topics, followed by mystery, politics and economics, humour and football. Listeners’ favourite podcast formats are talks (59.76%), interviews (46.08%) and narrative or documentaries (43.67%). In addition, 30% of listeners listen to both podcasts and online radio.podcast