Tag: Wrapped for Podcasters

Celebrating the Creators and Fans of 2023 With Wrapped for Podcasters

November 29, 2023

Wrapped for Podcasters

Today we kicked off 2023 Spotify Wrapped, our annual campaign that brings creators and fans together to share their love of all things audio. And as Wrapped for Podcasters celebrates its fifth year, we’re thrilled to bring the love, excitement, and data stories to more creators than ever. 

2023 Wrapped for Podcasters is our way to recognize the achievements across our podcast creator ecosystem and offer a unique deep dive into user behavior, Spotify stats, listening trends, and more from the past year. 

Wrapped for Podcasters Sample

“Wrapped is Spotify’s biggest campaign of the year and has become its own moment around the world,” Anna Sian, Head of Marketing at Spotify for Podcasters, tells For the Record. “And from a creator’s audience growth to other milestones they’ve unlocked throughout the year, it’s a trove of really valuable information on their trends from the past year. It’s as personalized as a campaign can possibly get.”

A Really Good Year.

There’s a lot to celebrate this year with podcasts. In 2023, more than 300 million listeners discovered their new favorite podcasts, and they were engaged, responding to more than 14 million creator polls. Of the shows receiving a podcaster Wrapped this year, over one-third were created in 2023, with more than 760 million minutes recorded overall. 

At Spotify, we’ve also been busy: doubling down on giving creators more data and better tools. We’ve increased our focus on creator education throughout the year so more podcasters understand ways to grow their show and be successful. “With Spotify for Podcasters programs like Masterclass and the release of our recent Fan Study report,” explains Anna, “our goal is to help creators learn from their peers and develop strong bonds within the podcasting community.” 

All About Growth

“It may come as no surprise that podcast creators are obsessed with their shows’ growth,” Anna says. “They work hard to perfect every episode, so they want to know their show is resonating with fans and finding new listeners. Their unwavering dedication to understanding listener data is the driving inspiration behind Wrapped for Podcasters.”

Like previous years, the core experience is rooted in a microsite that delivers a personalized experience to each podcaster, with listener data and creator trends framed in the context of the past year. Top episodes, most-shared episodes, average podcast rating, global listener stats, and year-over-year growth are all there for creators to dig into.

This year we’re adding even more tools and insights to Wrapped for Podcasters, including the top music genre streamed by a show’s podcast listeners and a new data story featuring fan engagement insights that includes a quiz around your most-talked-about episode. 

It’s the Journey

“Listening to a podcast is like having a creator as your best friend,” explains Anna. “They’re with you on your commute, while you’re washing dishes, making you laugh or sharing some tears with you. Wrapped for Podcasters provides the perfect opportunity for creators to acknowledge their fans who have come along on their journeys, stuck around, and become a part of the conversation.”

Dig into a world of data and read all about it in the Spotify for Podcasters blog.

Podcaster Wrapped Celebrates Podcast Creators and Their Fans in 2022

December 2, 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.

2021 Wrapped for Podcasters Shows That More People Are Becoming Audio Creators

December 16, 2021

2020 was an explosive year for new podcast creation—but 2021 proved to be the year podcasting really hit its stride. New creation hasn’t slowed down one bit, and more than ever, podcasters are getting more creative with their content development and business models. With 1.2 million new podcasts published on Spotify this past year, it’s clear that an increasing number of people are listening to and creating audio. 

This year, we delivered Wrapped for Podcasters to more creators than ever, demonstrating that the creator economy is growing—and rapidly. 

We believe that a huge driver of this growth is accessibility to innovative creation tools. Of the aforementioned 1.2 million new podcasts published on Spotify in 2021, more than 1 million of them were created using Anchor, our all-in-one podcasting platform. Anchor now powers around 75% of all podcasts on Spotify—the vast majority of which are from independent creators—so its user behavior offers a great peek into what’s happening in the world of those up-and-coming podcasters.

Anchor offers more to creators than your basic record-and-upload. In 2021, we began offering a variety of features in Anchor that enable podcasters to create, grow, and monetize their content in ways that had never been possible before. This includes:

We believe innovating on the creation experience has a profound impact on the growth of the overall podcasting creator economy. And when we took a look into the data from 2021, the numbers proved that to be the case.

  • Anchor continues to drive 80% of the new podcasts being published to Spotify every year.
  • These independent shows collectively are driving incredible engagement: In recent months, more than 40% of monthly podcast listeners on Spotify have listened to at least one show created using Anchor.
  • More than 13,000 Anchor-powered shows charted in 2021, making up 35% of the shows on Spotify’s charts this year. 
  • As a result of rolling out these new formats that can’t be experienced anywhere else, the consumption of Anchor-powered shows globally leans toward Spotify, with around 65% of their consumption happening on Spotify.
  • The market for independent podcasters is truly global: The top markets, in terms of total new shows created on Anchor in 2021, were the U.S., Brazil, Mexico, Indonesia, and India.
  • Central and South America in particular are on the come-up for a thriving creator economy in podcasts: Anchor’s fastest-growing markets in 2021, measured by average monthly increase in new shows, were Peru, Colombia, Argentina, Mexico, and Chile.

We’re excited to see continued progress in the podcast space as creators grow and hit their strides. Stay tuned for more to come in 2022!