Research Outline

Top Podcasts During COVID-19

Goals

To understand the state of the podcast space by looking at the top podcasts or successful podcasts during the global lockdown, podcaster collaborations, or extensions into other platforms and the role of virtual tools in podcasting.

Early Findings

Top Podcasts

As of May 18, 2020, here are the top 15 Apple podcasts in the US based on the number of new subscribers:

Role of Zoom in Podcasting

  • Zoom is a good virtual tool resource that is being used by more and more podcasters who do remote recording.
  • According to a podcaster named Chasing Earhart, "We use Zoom because it has built-in recording and it splits the audio from the video automatically, which makes it easy for our team to edit. The audio quality for Zoom is also superior to many other audio recordings. Often times not much editing is required to get the quality of sound that we need. Additionally, we use Zoom because of its flexibility and its ability to encompass multiple participants in roundtable discussions.”
  • The Selling with Social Podcast states that “Podcasts just done over the phone don’t end up working out as well as podcasts recorded via video with Zoom. You get to have a real live virtual discussion which creates a better listening experience because audience members feel as if they are in the same room as the host and interviewee."
  • While The Publishing Profits Podcast Show states that they “use Zoom for every interview we do. We record both video and audio. We post the videos on YouTube and use only the audio for the iTunes podcast.”