In Italy perhaps we read little, but we listen a lot. The podcast boom photographed by NIQ for Audible

In Italy perhaps we read little, but we listen a lot.  The podcast boom photographed by NIQ for Audible

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We use them to inform ourselves, deepen, relax. And we’ve never liked them so much: listeners have grown by 60 percent in the last 5 years. Here is the data from a leading audio entertainment production and distribution company

It’s a bit like gold: a safe investment. One of those thrill-free bets, which when placed at the table with friends make it easy to win. Every year you look at podcast listening data in Italy and every year that number grows. In Italy there are 16.4 million people who have listened to them in the last 12 months. If compared to 2022 the growth is 7 percent, with one million more listeners, the five-year growth is an impressive 59 percent: in 2018, there were “only” 10.3 million Italians listening to podcasts, today there are six million extra pairs of ears. to reveal it, the latest research by NielsenIQ (NIQ) for Audible – Amazon company among the major players in the production and distribution of audio entertainment, present in Italy for seven years – presented last week on the occasion of Italian Podcast Awards – The Podthe three-day industry meeting.

“Italy is an important market for Audible – confirms Juan Baixeras, country manager for Italy and Spain – and in which we continue to invest, working with the best exponents of the Italian creative class. To date we have 60,000 titles in the catalog and 14,700 are in Italian. In 2016 there were 2,700”. Last year alone, the company spent nearly two million euros on original podcasts in Italian. And this attention to our country is somewhat surprising, given that every year Istat reminds us that little is read in Italy. Yet podcasts and audiobooks have never fared so well. We like to listen, who would have thought. To find out (39 percent of those interviewed), learn more (32) and entertain (30). In the times of social media, in the millennium of the image, the voice has returned. Podcasts are mostly listened to by young people: between 18-24 and 25-34 years old, even if the percentage of over 55s who use them has grown by 8 percent this year, says NIQ. Not a big news, of course, because girls and boys are the most geeks, the most connected, the ones with the airpod always in one ear. And they are, in 46 percent of cases, also those who “infect” their parents. There is another surprise, however: if one looks at the so-called “heavy users”, who listen to podcasts almost every day and who represent about 7 percent of the interviewees, one notices that they live above all in the south, as was status for audiobooks.

Last note – and it is a pleasure since every month Il Foglio also offers its ranking of the five most interesting podcasts – is that the discovery of new products passes above all from the web: via social networks and from websites, general interest ones and those of producers . Following, as usual, there is the oldest advertising trick in the world, and perhaps the most reliable: word of mouth. So come on: listen and make others listen.


  • Henry Cicchetti

  • Born in the lands of Virgil in a sultry September of 1987, he seeks refreshment in those of Aeneas. Al Foglio since 2016. He is @e_cicchetti on Twitter

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