When the pandemic started, the concern for podcasts and audio to text was that with people not commuting, we would see a big drop in audience. But Twipe reports that “research from GlobalWebIndex found the decrease in commuters has been offset by people who are listening to more podcasts (ranging from 13-16% globally). There has even been growth in advertising revenue for podcasts.”   “This is backed up by publisher experiences as well,” writes Mary-Katharine Phillips, “with Norwegian media group Schibsted still expecting to see podcast ad revenue growing by 50% this year, due to factors beyond the pandemic such as the maturation of the market.”   There's also evidence that audio to text has accelerated during this time. Dutch news website The Correspondent recently launched a new audio app for members. “We were a text-based site mostly, and our members asked us if we could also provide audio, because it’s eas ...

The time to jump in the text-to-audio pool has apparently arrived. Harvard Business Review (HBR), The Economist, The New Yorker and The Atlantic are among those magazines now offering narrated articles. Some do the narration themselves, and others partner with news narration apps, splitting fees and being grateful for a bigger audience.

Part of the success of podcasts—over half of publisher respondents in a new Reuters Institute study said they would be pushing various types of podcast initiatives this year—comes from the new demands on our time. We can listen to podcasts while doing something else, be it driving, commuting, working out, cooking, etc.