The Covid-19 pandemic has changed all our lives in different ways. As a result of this, there has been a significant growth in both the number of podcasts and people who listen to them. Between January and November 2021, for example, there were 1.3bn plays including podcasts on BBC Sounds, a rise of 8% on the same period in 2020. According to Podcast Insights in the US, 24% (68 million) listen to podcasts weekly which is up from 22% in 2019 which was reported in The Infinite Dial. In addition to this, roughly a quarter of us integrate podcast listening into regular activities.
Numbers Matter
This year will see a predicted 15.5 million listeners, an increase of nearly 3m on the pre-pandemic forecast, while these numbers will only continue to grow. Some 41% of UK adults have listened to a podcast in the last 30 days, according to other figures.
Podcasts Insights reports that more than two million podcasts were available in the UK by the end of 2021, and over 48 million individual episodes as of April 2021. Emarketer says that in the UK this year, there will be 15.5 million listeners, a rise of 2.9m or 23% on its pre-pandemic forecast.
More globally, Emarketer looks at 18 nations for its latest podcast listener forecast – these include the States and Canada, Australia, Japan, China and North Korea, plus a number of Latin American and European countries including the UK. It predicts that, in 2022, there will be 424.2m listeners across these nations, or just over one in five (20.3%) of their web users. By 2024, those figures are set to rise to 504.9m or nearly a quarter (23.5%) share of those using the internet.
All of which means, of course, that there are an awful lot of podcasts out there! When you compare this to only a few years back you quickly notice that there is an awful lot of noise you need to get through in order to stand out with your content. Whether you like this or not – good quality audio and video play an important part to this!
Start As You Mean To Go On
You need to ensure that the audio and video recorded is as good as it can be before it is edited. You may want to check out our Ultimate Podcast Equipment guide here. Once recorded further editing can do a lot of good for overall listening experience. Removing annoying deep breaths, uhms, mouth clicks, reducing noise, removing background echo are just a few things any good podcast editor will do for you. Podcast editing will give your listeners the best possible quality of the output and that is a key part of this process. Done well, it can lift your show above the average.
How To Best Record Your Podcast
Many podcasters have used the likes of Skype or Zoom to record their broadcasts. But the reality is that these platforms are simply not going to be good enough for podcasting.
Instead, we recommend a service such as Riverside.fm. Online recording studio that focuses on the quality. It cleverly records the audio for you and your guest (if you have one) at source. This means that you get the best possible quality as a final output. It enables you to record both audio and video (which is unique at the time of writing). There’s a mobile app as well, and it’s used by household names including Spotify, Microsoft and The New York Times.
Edit Your Podcast With The Pros + Get Free Podcast Editing
Once you have an episode you are happy with, talk to us at Music Radio Creative about editing your podcast.
We can help with the following:
- Removing excess noise: You may need this in particular for environments including live events and interviews.
- Adjusting the perceived loudness level: This is to meet the new agreed industry standard for online, mobile and podcast audio listening.
- Incorporating any supplied audio including branding, for example jingles.
- Getting rid of audio clutter such as breaths and microphone popping or any other blips or errors.
- Adding EQ and light compression, as needed.
You will be assigned a dedicated producer. The one person who will with time get to know your podcast very well. You will have a team of experts at your disposal! Our expert audio producers have the expertise to create professional podcasts. So you can just send us raw recordings and let us take care of the rest. We know no other podcast will be quite like yours – so we’ll tailor what we do to suit your specific needs. Reference this article when speaking to our team – we will produce your first episode, up to 30 mins in length for free!
