What's contributed to more folks making podcasts?

ALostInquirer@lemm.ee to Out of the loop@lemmy.world – 25 points –

I know they've been around for ages now, but it feels like in the past few years there's been an increasing amount of people making them and trying to start little gigs/businesses of making them.

What's influenced or contributed to this if it's been an actual increase?

8

Well there was this whole pandemic thing starting a few years ago...

Side hustle culture. Pandemic. Decline of customer facing jobs. Those would be some of my guesses.

I’m a small business owner, and I notice a lot of online entrepreneur-ish businesspeople recommending that everyone start a podcast for marketing purposes. The idea is that you get people to listen, then you get them onto your email list, then you can sell to them. It’s a low cost (but high effort) marketing funnel for people starting out.

The result is that now, every idiot who wants to “coach” people online, or sell an online class, has a miserable podcast. I’m sure the raw podcast #s reflect a lot of 8-episode abandoned shows because Becky couldn’t sell her online hair styling course and quit.

https://www.pewresearch.org/journalism/fact-sheet/audio-and-podcasting/

Thanks for some data! Although, the question of the OP I think remains regarding what's contributing to the slight increase in listeners increase in their production. It also doesn't appear to be a high revenue/profit market, which might otherwise help explain some of the folks joining in making them.

I think it's the video aspect of the podcasts nowadays. Back in the day, they used to be just audio, but now, you can add video sponsor blocks and stuff like that, so that made them more appealing to people that want to make a few bucks online, plus video as a media is a lot more powerful than just audio.

My 2 cents, doesn't mean I'm right.

That link was about actual podcasts,nothing in there about videocasts unless I'm going blind