Top Podcasts

• At the end of 2019, Time magazine compiled its list of the top ten podcasts for 2019.

• The podcasts ranked six to ten were (in descending order), Spectacular Failures with Laura Ober, Morbituaries with Ro Mocca, Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend, Scattered with Chris Garcia, and Decoder Ring with Willa Paskin.
• At number five was Moonface, a fictional podcast of James Kim, based on a gay Korean man and his mother, who speaks little English, while he speaks little Korean. He struggles with "coming out" to his family.
• In fourth place, Jon Ronson's Last Day of August, a true-crime story about an adult movie star who committed suicide after posting a controversial tweet.
•  Blank Check with Griffin and David comes in at number three. Griffin Newman and David Sims discuss the filmography of different directors.
• At number two was You're Wrong About, with journalists Michael Hobbes and Sarah Marshall. Together they examine a range of crimes and scandals, like the OJ Simpson and Tonya Harding stories, from a different angle.
• Times' top podcast in 2019 was 1619, with Nikole Hannah Jones, who reframes US history through the eyes of the institution of slavery.

Audio Books

• The sale of audio books reached almost $1 billion, with $940 million in sales in 2018. This represented year to year growth of 24.5% since 2017. Unit sales saw growth of 27.3%. 91.4% of audio book sales came from digital sales.
• In 2019, it was reported 50% of Americans had listened to an audio book.

Vertical Specific

•  Calm is a meditation and sleep program that aims to help people "sleep more, stress less, live better." It has been downloaded more than 50 million times.
• Alex Tew and Michael Acton Smith are the founders of Calm. Tamara Levitt is the instructor and head of mindfulness.

Summary

• There is a considerable amount of information available concerning the audio market. We have barely scratched the surface in our first hour of research. We suggest further research to meet your goals.