For much of its history, podcasting has been largely a free, ad-supported medium.
However, as time has gone on listeners have had more ways to pay their favourite podcasters: from Patreons and donation drives to show-level subscriptions on services like Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
Now research company Mediavision has some data on how that trend is developing in Spotify’s homeland: Sweden. It claims that 530,000 households paid for podcasts in the first quarter of this year, up from 305,000 a year ago.
That’s people either paying for individual podcasts, or for subscription-based podcast services – although it does not include Spotify subscriptions.
The company also said that close to 1.5 million 15-74 year-olds in Sweden listen to podcasts on an average day. That’s just under 15% of the overall population.
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