Numbers

The Controller of BBC 5Live, Heidi Dawson, has offered a prediction to the website Prolific North.

"I predict that 2020 will see rapid growth in the number of people listening to podcasts. In 2019, 8.4 million people listened to podcasts, which is a huge 2.4 million increase from 6 million in 2018. The BBC is having a creative explosion of podcasts right now, which can all be heard on the new Sounds app.

"These include the new series of 5 Live’s That Peter Crouch Podcast in January. Also expect to see a lot more podcasts from the audio streaming companies and other new players in the market too."

The most recent published figures from RAJAR show podcasting reaching 17.1% of adults over 15 in the UK every week (i.e. they listened to at least five minutes of something). That's equivalent to 9.4m, so I'm not sure what figures Heidi is using. The BBC claims 3m weekly users for BBC Sounds