Is the length of your podcast important? Libsyn has some stats that will shock you!

Libsyn's The Feed came out with a new episode that talked about the length of your podcast, and the numbers they found really blew me away.

For those of you who don't know, Libsyn is a podcast hosting service and is hosted by Rob Walch and Elsie Escobar. In their latest episode (93) Rob Walch talked about his findings when it comes to the length of podcasts.

Now, two years ago or so Rob looked into podcast length. And he found some interesting stats. But, before I get into the numbers I want to explain that this isn't for all the shows hosted by Libsyn, it is only for shows that get 100,000 downloads or more per episode.

With that said, Rob found that, according to Libsyn's stats, 68% of shows that fit this criteria were 51 minutes or longer, meaning a large majority of the most popular shows are nearly an hour long at the least. Which seems like a lot, but Rob went back through the data recently this year, he wanted to see if that number changed at all, and it turns out it did, drastically.

According to Walch, it went from being 68% to 84% of shows that are 51 minutes or longer! But that's not all.

Walch went even further, explaining that the data also showed that podcast episodes 30 minutes or shorter only take up about 9.9% of the pie. And here's the kicker, shows that are 2 hours long or longer take up 13.2% of the pie. So more people are listening to long episodes of popular podcasts than they are shorter episodes.

It just goes to show that podcast listeners like long-form episodes.

Now, Rob Walch, after explaining this data explained that podcast length isn't everything. If you have a shorter show, like yours truly, you shouldn't stretch the content to fit it into a longer format. On the other side, if you are massively chopping up your show in the edit room you may actually not need to, if you have the content to put out and its a little long people will still listen.

I used to think shorter episodes were not he rise, but it seems like that isn't the case.

So what about you, dear listener, do you find yourself listening to longer podcasts instead of shorter podcasts? Let me know on Twitter or Facebook both @ThePodcastBrief. I have links in the description of this episode.

Speaking of links, if you want to listen to this show yourself I have a link in the description and over at thepodcastbrief.com.

Anyway, that's all I have for you all today, my name is Jeff Perry, this has been The Podcast Brief and I will see you all tomorrow!

Sources/Links

• @ThePodcastBrief - Twitter
• The Podcast Brief - Facebook
• Libsyn's The Feed Episode 93