The success of podcast funny 2 Dope Queens, hosted by Jessica Williams and Phoebe Robinson, made the television channel HBO bet on recording several specials in 2018 that moved their show to the Kings Theater in New York. The result was a program halfway between its original format and the traditional theatrical comedy show. It is not an exceptional case: in London, spaces such as King’s Place, Leicester Square Theater or the Soho Theater usually host recordings of podcasts before live audiences that have already become mass phenomena.
A similar path has been traveled in Spain recently by the podcast I can talk!, by Enrique Aparicio and Beatriz Cepeda. His show, which began in the summer of 2019 and already has hundreds of thousands of listeners, was one of the most heard on Spotify during the lockdown, a boom which resulted in the 400 tickets they sold in just two weeks to attend a live recording on January 17 at the Reina Victoria theater in Madrid, an experience that they will repeat in April. “It is often said that on one side is the Internet and on the other, real life, and that what happens on the Internet does not happen in real life. Well, yes, we have really passed ”, explains Aparicio.
The relationship between theater and podcast it is not new in Spain. A reverse path to I can talk! went through it Weekly misshapen, space produced, written and conducted by Isa Calderón and Lucía Litjmaer as a late night female who moved to the format podcast in Deformed Weekly Ideal Total. Even some experiments go further and have crossed theater and podcast, like the one that the playwright and screenwriter Gabi Ochoa set up in 2018 with the play At your feet a lion surrendered, an experience similar to live radio drama. As Enrique Aparicio explains, in his case the transfer to the theater incorporates shows before and after the recording that only those attending live can enjoy.
These are examples that highlight the excellent health of the format podcast in Spain and the path it has traveled until the explosion that took place in 2020. The II Report on voice and audio in Spain prepared by the consulting firms Prodigioso Volcán and SEIM, presented this Wednesday, confirms that in 2020 the Spanish have heard more podcasts than in previous years and that they have done it in other times and places different from the ones they used to do. The confinement altered routines and led many Spaniards to approach this audio format, as already highlighted by a Spotify study presented in October 2020 that claimed that 38% of Spanish podcast listeners began to listen to them during confinement .
In 2020, not only has the number of listeners increased, the way they are consumed has also changed. While, in 2019, 67% of listeners of podcasts They said to listen to them at home, in 2020 the percentage rises to 76.1%, according to the study by Prodigioso Volcán and SEIM. Listening while working also grows, going from 14% in 2019 to 18.2% in 2020. And the times when it is usually listened to change: while in previous years the great peak occurred in the time of the journey of home to work has now been replaced by the afternoons, especially between 8pm and 10pm. 16.7% of those surveyed say they listen podcasts daily or weekly. In terms of themes, humor, entertainment, culture, outreach and information are still preferred. In 2020, the most listened to on Spotify were Nobody knows anything, Understand your mind, Meditated, Meditation to connect with the internal guide, History of Spain for selectivity Y Modern life.
This growth of the format in Spain has also been driven by the arrival of new players such as Podimo and Audible, who join, among others, the already widely established network of podcasts in Spanish of Podium Podcastby Prisa Radio. For 48.2% of those surveyed, Spotify continues to be the main platform for listening to podcasts.
The report presented this Wednesday also tries to find the reasons for the boom of the podcast in the last year. One of the factors that experts indicate is the excess of screens to which people have been exposed, which has made the voice welcome with more enthusiasm. “Everything suggested that, if the great moments of consumption of the podcast They were in the routines and the transfers, and we were all at home, it was difficult to imagine that they would continue to listen podcasts”, Acknowledges María Jesús Espinosa de los Monteros, director of Podium Podcast.
“We detect the need for people to feel accompanied,” explains Aparicio. “As a listener of podcasts I understood that growth. There were many hours at home, hours in which it seemed that the things to do were finished, and the good thing about podcast is that you can do something else while, get to exercise, cook …, accompanied by people you have chosen. It’s not like turning on the radio, because the programming is what they offer you, in this case you choose because you discover it or they recommend it, and that generates a very special bond ”, he adds.
As for 2021, experts are betting on a change in content, with more evasive and entertainment formats that could be reflected in a fiction boom, as Espinosa de los Monteros points out. “Now him podcast You can go to a more thoughtful, deep format. It will also be necessary to analyze how the ticking of the podcast to attract younger audiences. Does it make sense to do podcasts two minutes or even less? ”, adventure.
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