A New Atlas for Podcasting, Debunking Listener Assumptions, & More

Today in the business of podcasting:

• A new Sounds Profitable report, The Podcast Atlas, finds audio podcasts lead every creator-economy format on trust, with 58% of listeners rating audio highest for factual accuracy and only 31% skeptical of its ad claims, even as video and clips drive more immediate purchase action.
• Keyari Page argues the creator economy hasn't replaced traditional media but reorganized it entirely around direct audience relationships, with creator-led models becoming core commercial infrastructure for modern media.
• A five-market study from NumberEight finds podcast audiences split nearly evenly by gender and skew Millennial, challenging assumptions that listeners are uniformly young or male and pointing to real variation by market and age group.
• Signal Hill Insights' Paul Riismandel highlights data showing U.S. weekly podcast consumers grew 45% since 2022, with YouTube and Spotify driving new-listener growth as Apple Podcasts' app share declines.

To find links to these, and every article covered in today's episode, click here. You can also subscribe to The Download's newsletter to receive the full issue straight to your email inbox every day.