We predicted in January of this year that Spanish language podcasts would boom in 2019, and as forecasted, our data is showing a marked increase in listens from Spanish speaking countries.
We were originally led to predict the surge in popularity as a result of the growth of Spanish language podcasts on Voxnest (13%+ in 2018), combined with the intuition that market leaders would enter new markets such as South America. And, as reported just three weeks ago, Spotify has had an impressive expansion into the South American market thanks in part to the company’s strong Spanish language content combined with the penetration of android devices in the region.
Cementing our earlier predictions, our most recent figures show that of the 5 top growing geographies for March 2019 – four are Spanish speaking. Chile leads the group with a growth of 83.95%, followed by Argentina (55.28%), Peru (49.1%), Mexico (47.84%) and lastly China (43.62%).
Despite this proven demand, the industry has yet to sit up and take notice, the most recent PwC report states that $747 million was invested in podcast advertising in the United States, while Mexico finished the year with only $23 million. Adonde Media addressed this issue in their recent article, saying that there is a need for ‘professionalization’ in podcasting in Latin America and that some of the major podcast producers in the area are looking at ways to make their models profitable.
What will be most interesting is to see how this boom evolves – will we see more Spanish language content emerging and will a Spanish market finally be able to knock America off the top spot of highest monthly unique streams?
Watch this space, we will be reporting throughout the year on how the trend progresses.