Podcaster Wrapped Celebrates Podcast Creators and Their Fans in 2022
Earlier this week we revealed 2022 Wrapped, our annual campaign that brings creators and fans together around a shared love of all things audio. And to accompany it, we launched Podcaster Wrapped for creators.
Podcaster Wrapped is our way to recognize achievements across our podcast creator ecosystem and offer a unique peek into user behavior and listening trends from the past year. And what a year it was! We were blown away by the amount of podcast content created: It would take you over 1,500 years to listen to every minute of the 25 million+ podcast episodes published in 2022.
As we look back at all the meaningful moments that made up 2022—the milestones, big wins, and one-of-a-kind connection that brings creators and fans together—it’s clear there’s a lot to celebrate.
More for listeners and creators to love
This year, we saw a more than 50% increase in podcast consumption. Over half of the billions of hours of content played in 2022 was newly published since January.
Meanwhile, we continued to build innovative tools that enable podcasters to create, grow, and monetize their content in new ways. We brought video podcasts to creators in over 180 markets so that listeners can enjoy a visual complement to content and creators have a new way to reach and connect with their fans. We also made it easier for creators to sound better with a new audio enhancement feature, and we expanded our interactivity capabilities by making Q&A and Polls available to creators around the world.
Getting to know you
We launched our first-ever Fan Study for podcasters, giving creators insights into fan behavior so they can make more informed decisions about how to grow their show. Through Fan Study, we learned things like fans who follow your podcast will listen to four times the number of episodes, and Gen Z’s podcast discovery is growing at twice the rate of other generations.
We elevated dozens of emerging podcasters from around the world with programs like RADAR Podcasters and Sound Up, which both aim to spotlight up-and-coming creators and provide them with support to grow their audiences.
Near and far
And we continued to see that podcasts are truly global. Podcaster Wrapped showed us that the majority of podcasts published are listened to in more than one country, and we’re seeing impressive creation growth in Central and South America, specifically Colombia, Argentina, Guatemala, Ecuador, and Costa Rica. These countries saw a more than 50% increase in new shows created between 2021 and 2022. The top markets in terms of shows published are the U.S., Brazil, Mexico, Indonesia, and India.
We love seeing creators grow and hit their strides, and we’ll continue to build programs and tools to help podcasters of all kinds find success in 2023 and beyond.
