February 10, 2005
RSS Metrics, Podcasting
With all the coverage of podcasting in the media lately, we thought we'd chime in with some data. It appears that the podcasting trend continues to gather momentum. Through our SmartCast service, we manage a growing number of the podcast feeds out there, and we have a variety of interesting aggregate statistics to report.
Podcasting Growth
We launched SmartCast in October of 2004, and by the end of the year, we were managing about 750 podcasts via the SmartCast service. That total is now up to 1,750. The chart below breaks down growth by week since service launch.
Podcasting Clients
There's a very interesting statistic that highlights how different the RSS world will be from the web 1.0 world. Specialized podcasting clients have quickly entered the ranks of the top RSS clients in the FeedBurner statistics. iPodder, iPodderX, Doppler and Nimiq have ensconced themselves in the top 50 RSS clients as measured by total daily FeedBurner circulation. From other metrics we're observing, it appears this specialty client trend will continue across multiple content types. We can easily imagine RSS clients that function as screensavers and only "play" photo feeds, video clients that specialize in rich media feeds, and many more. Look for many networked consumer electronics to be delivered RSS-ready; some of those efforts are already underway.
Podcasting Subscribers
Ok, sure, people are podcasting, but is anybody listening? Yes. There are several podcasts in the top 50 feeds we manage. A couple of these have over 3000 subscribers/listeners.
Overall, we measured 13,500 listeners to podcasts that FeedBurner managed at the beginning of January and 24,000 listeners at the beginning of February. Doing the math from the chart above, you can see that this runs at a steady average of about 14-15 listeners per podcast. When you plot the curve of listeners across all the podcasts we manage, it looks like the characteristic "long tail" power curve that we see for blog feed subscribers.
Podcast Size
As an aside, the average size of a podcast entry managed by FeedBurner has remained constant at about 7MB for the last couple months. Obviously, there are extremely large podcasts and very very short podcasts, but it’s interesting to see that across the aggregate, the average size has remained about the same. NB: we don’t backhaul the audio bandwidth itself, just the xml feed.
Looking Forward
We have a number of plans for enhancing our SmartCast service. Our plans include capabilities that will make podcasting even easier and more powerful. We are still putting the wraps on a major statistics enhancement due out shortly, after which we plan to head back to the lab on SmartCast updates.
Comments
I'd be curious to see what the future numbers are; right now I have a formula for the above numbers which seems to be fairly accurate in predicting. (1925 +/-5%, probably -, for the next week)
Dick,
This is fantastic stuff! Great job. Podcasting will change the future of broadcast communications. I'm very impressed with the work you guys are doing. Congrats.
It is exciting to see this growth curve. Over a year, it is my expectation that it will look like a hockey stick as podcasting grows. It is particularly significant when juxtaposed to the Pew Internet and American Life study that shows that just 5% of users employ RSS readers. There is lots of room for explosive growth as these two advances gain broader acceptance.
The spoken word is so powerful. Now with podcasting creating a new dimension to citizen journalism -- citizen radio, we are scaling new heights every day.
Fascinating data! I'd love to see the avg number of podcasts produced each month by each individual podcaster. Like in blogging, I'd expect a big percentage of folks to just kick the tires and record one or two podcasts. But then there are those who will do the daily/weekly/ad hoc podcasts that pull those numbers up.
I'd like a bit more detail - if you can provide it - that clearly lets me know HOW people listen to the enclosure file. Do they click on it and listen through the browser, or subscribe through an aggregator? Is that information included in the FB report?
Patrick, we don't have that data compiled, but it's an interesting question. We have a number of other statistics reports on deck, but we'll look to include a metric like that in future reports.
Yeah, podcasting rocks. Now, if I could just get my podcast to work!
Kudos, this is important information. Thanks for sharing it, you're doing the right thing for the community.
Is there any detailed information about Podcasting Clients usage?
I don't buy that the majority of listeners are actually syncing and listening on mobile devices, but either way, I think it's nice that people are taking the next step from text to multimedia.
I think that there is a great potential for podcasting in higher education. We are currently piloting a podcast of the audio component of recorded lectures from a chemistry class. My guess is that the success of this will be related to whether students discover other podcasts that interest them.
These are definitely interesting figures, but as others have pointed out there is some missing information that would help clarify a few things. How many of the podcasts included in the count have been updated in the past week, for example? How many have more than 10 subscribers? More than 100? How many unique listeners are subscribed to all the podcasts? (That's a growth chart I'd really like to see.)
A great start, but so much more going on underneath the surface that begs to be looked at.
I would also like to see future number I think this site is going to continue to grow in popularity.
How do you handle multiple feeds from a publisher. I have more than 100 feeds produced from our content. How do you handle that?
Dean W. Johnson
I'm am curious as to the licensing issues that might arise say if someone creates a personal podcast using recorded music. Should the person doing that podcast first contact artists groups such as ASCAP? Thanks!
I'd be very curious to get updated figures on this service. I've read elsewhere that Feedburner now manages over 6.000 podcasts. that seems a pretty impressive growth rate.
I'm crash coursing through all the podcasting news, information and technology pages. Unfortunately what I can't find is any data on the accessibility and use of this technology in other languages, or on other hardware. For example what is the penetration of podcast downloads among Spanish speaking US users, Central American and South American Users? What I am aware of is that 75% of the Internet population now uses their own native language search engines (up from 25% just 5 years ago). so if that is the case there should be some numbers somewhere on ipod sales, podcast downloads etc from foreign engine resources. Any ideas out there?
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I'm crash coursing through all the podcasting news, information and technology pages. Unfortunately what I can't find is any data on the accessibility and use of this technology in other languages, or on other hardware. For example what is the penetration of podcast downloads among Spanish speaking US users, Central American and South American Users? What I am aware of is that 75% of the Internet population now uses their own native language search engines (up from 25% just 5 years ago). so if that is the case there should be some numbers somewhere on ipod sales, podcast downloads etc from foreign engine resources. Any ideas out there?
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it true you a right.
Hi guys, I found a site that might interest you all, it's about podcasting statistics (http://www.podcastingStats.com) and it looks quite good with a bunch of intertesting data. Cheers, Matt.
