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C

Listening to the Coffee

The Story of

Coffee

Podcasts

W hat is your background music when you drive

to work, cook your dinner, or brew your first
cup of coffee in the morning? These days,
listening to podcasts is the answer for many
people. Today, in the U.S. – the largest podcast market – there
are over 100 million active listeners with 200 million episode
downloads weekly, according to Triton Digital, an audience
measurement company. Podcasts have now become a
much-welcomed form of entertainment and learning for all,
but when looking back at the history of this media, it is sur-
prisingly new compared to other formats such as videos and
words. In the 1980s, “audio blogging” started to become a
trend. It could be considered as the prototype for podcasts.
Then with the invention of the iPod, the word “podcast” first
appeared, coining the two words “iPod” and “broadcast”.
However, podcasts didn’t really become a phenomenon until
2014 when This is American Life launched the first season of
their Serial podcast. It was a surprise success, achieving 68
million downloads. The next stage of growth for podcasts
happened in 2017 when The New York Times debuted The
Daily news podcast. It got the highest unique monthly U.S.
audience of any podcast in 2019.

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