Golden age for the podcast in Spanish

In recent years, the voice has acquired an important role in the technology sector. The frenetic pace at which modern life passes has made it easier for stories told on demand, podcasts, to live their best moment. According to the second report published by the iVoox Observatory on the state of the podcast in Spanish in 2022, consumption time has doubled compared to 2021 in Spain, as users now spend 9.5 hours a week listening to this type of formats.

The rise of the platforms that host these stories where the great protagonist is the voice is a clear sign that the format works and still has a lot of room for growth. In fact, a new podcast application has recently appeared on the Spanish scene, Sonora, a new audio subscription service that stands out from the competition by only broadcasting exclusive and own-produced content, that is, it is not broadcast in other platforms or channels. According to one of its founders, Gabriel Sáenz de Buruaga, in a recent interview, the platform aims to reach profitability in 2025, with close to 120,000 subscribers.

As of today, only seven months after its launch, they do not give user figures, but they assure that the reception in subscribers is still very high and the consumption within the platform is very high. They already have 88 own titles.

Sonora joins a fairly broad panorama of platforms where it is possible to find many exclusive content in Spanish by the hand of small Spanish companies that have been growing but also where the technological giants have their place, which have not hesitated to bet on our language for the rise of podcast listening in Spain and Latin America.

Among the national platforms that compete against the giants, iVoox is one of the most prominent. This company, which was born 13 years ago, has remained a benchmark in podcasts thanks to hosting very diverse content from all kinds of creators and also with exclusive content. In total, it boasts of having the largest catalog in Spanish, with more than 420,000 podcasts in this language.

In the case of Podimo, the platform has been making headlines for several years due to the closing of generous rounds of financing. The last one, in September of last year, of 58.6 million, was added to the 115 million raised previously. This platform, also Spanish, has more than 50,000 free-to-air titles in Spanish and 3,000 podcasts and 2,500 audiobooks exclusively for subscribers.

In this party from which you can take so much advantage, the big technology companies have entered in style. The largest streaming music platform, Spotify, already dared to launch its first podcast in Spanish in 2018, and since then its commitment to this format in our language has not stopped growing. According to its latest report, the consumption of podcasts in Spain has doubled in just one year, experiencing a growth of 106%. Likewise, the platform's data reveals the general growth of listeners in Spain, since more than 40% of Spaniards on Spotify listened to podcasts in 2022, which represents an increase in audience of 37% compared to 2021.

With these figures, it is not surprising that the company has increased its commitment to its own and exclusive content in this language and ensures that for the year just begun, "it will continue to increase the catalog of titles in Spanish and offer content with which the public can connect and identify themselves", they indicate from the company.

Another giant that has decided to bet heavily on the Spanish market has been Amazon. The US company has Audible, a podcast and audiobook platform that landed two years ago and which, as they explain, has more than doubled the number of titles available in Spanish, from 6,700 to almost 14,000. Narrated books have a strong weight at Audible, but the company is also betting on original and exclusive podcasts and even on audio series.

For their part, Apple and Google also have their own podcast platforms. The first offers a very wide variety of content, including in Spanish such as the Expansión podcast, and works more as a very varied repository, since for now it has not dared to take the plunge and produce its own titles in Spanish.

The case of Google is quite similar, with a very large repository that includes content of all kinds and from many different creators or media, all for free, and without exclusive content options in Spanish.