Not Alone

In the uber-trendy neighborhood of Minneapolis where I live, about every other person I walk past has the telltale white wires snaking out of their pockets and up to their ears. We are probably the most smug and insufferable people in the entire city.

But it turns out that until recently not too many of them were listening to podcasts. There may be tens of thousands of podcasts out there, but it didn’t seem like too many people were listening: a 2006 survey suggested that only 11 percent of the population had actually listened to a podcast. That number is up to 18 percent in 2008, and 9 percent have listened to a podcast in the past month.

I’m finally starting to think that maybe listening to podcasts isn’t like that time I thought it would be really awesome to buy an HD-DVD player.