• Spain is the European country with the lowest use of podcasts as a weekly news source (4%). Listeners consider that financial aid to understand issues in greater depth than other media.

• 44% of news podcast listeners in 27 countries would be willing to pay a reasonable price for them

4% of Spanish Internet users use the podcast as a regular source news and for 2% of respondents it is the main source , according to the question on news consumption in the last week, which for the first time has included this medium among the response options. These figures place Spain at the tail end of the 48 countries in which the survey was conducted, with an average of 11%. Africa is the region that listens most to weekly news podcasts: 30% of respondents in Nigeria, 26% in Kenya and 19% in South Africa. Among Western countries, the United States is first (15%). Spain has the same percentage as Argentina (4%) and is only above Japan (3%).

More willing to pay

Although 4% is a lower percentage in a context in which the Internet user prefers other news sources (television, newspapers, traditional radio, etc.) and the survey data from here on are hardly significant because the sample is very small (89 people in Spain), the results, especially when looking at all the countries surveyed, point to the podcast as a medium that is valued by the public and potentially profitable.

Forty-four percent of listeners of this news format in a set of 27 countries surveyed say they would be willing to pay a reasonable price for the news podcasts they like, and in markets like Australia, where many media outlets have implemented strict payment restrictions, the figure rises to 59%. These are strikingly high percentages when the 48-country average indicates that 27% of respondents who did not pay for online news in the past year would be willing to pay if they were offered some options such as access to multiple news sites at a reasonable price, packages with additional services or more flexible payment options. These data support the strategy of some media outlets that are investing in podcasts to foster audience loyalty and promote potential subscriptions.

The greater willingness to pay may be due to the added value that listeners attach to this format in terms of information: 71% of respondents who have used podcasts as a source of information in the last week in 27 countries believe that financial aid them to understand issues in greater depth than other media.

Moreover, the greater inclination to pay -especially in comparison with the general willingness to pay for online information- is correlated with the consumption of this medium as a source information: the greater the popularity in a market, the greater the willingness to pay.

Some trends in content and platforms

Returning to the data in Spain, those who used this news source in the week prior to the survey were also asked about the news podcasts they listen to most frequently and the platforms through which they access them. The answers to these open-ended questions allow us to glimpse some trends.

When asked about the titles they usually listen to, respondents mention both independent podcasts -such as Carne cruda and Saldremos mejores, which address socio-political current affairs from a leftist perspective- and content from traditional media. In the latter case, listeners point to brands such as Cadena SER, Onda Cero and COPE, and newspapers such as El Mundo and El País also appear. They mention, above all, well-known programs -such as Hoy por hoy, Julia en la Onda or Herrera en COPE-originally broadcast live by radio stations, which indicates that many respondents do not distinguish between a podcast and a radio program listened to on a tape-delayed basis.

Regarding access channels, the data point to a preference for general audio and video platforms, with YouTube and Spotify in the lead -both in Spain and in the 27 countries surveyed, with an international average of 39% for each of them-, perhaps because of their ease of access and combination with other content formats. The two aforementioned platforms also led the ranking when in the 2020 report listeners of podcasts -not only informative, but in general- were asked about their access channels: YouTube and Spotify were mentioned by 55% and 32% of respondents respectively. It seems, therefore, that a good part of listeners consume this format in the same applications in which they listen to music. This is followed by specialized podcast applications (such as iVoox) and platforms, websites and applications linked to traditional media.