By Nick Krewen
A report published yesterday by Spotify called Culture Next 2023: Top Gen Z Trends should be music to buyers’ ears: zoomers are boomin’!
Searching for deeper experiences, Gen Z – colloquially called “zoomers” and representing people born between the mid-1990s and mid-2010s – is flocking to podcasts for new cultural enlightenment.
And one way they’re doing it is by using Spotify as a portal to discovery through editorial and personalized music mixes and playlists.
Zoomers are leading the way when it comes to listening to music and podcasts, consuming over 560 billion songs and 3 billion podcasts, a 76% increase in total listening hours since 2022.
Now sporting 551 million global active users as of Spotify’s Q2 (ending June 30, 2023) – a 27% year-over-year increase – the company says 343 million of those users are listening to ad-supported fare, driving that revenue stream up 12% over the previous year.
ComScore data shows Spotify has seen a 26% increase in Gen Z users joining the service in this country alone, and that they tend to listen to podcasts at a faster-than-normal speed (most podcast players allow the user to choose at what speed they would like to listen to the recording at, i.e. 1.5x). Three-quarters (76%) of them also listen to songs at an accelerated speed, but speed isn’t not necessarily a measure of impact, notes Grace Kao, head of advertising business marketing at Spotify.
Because when it comes to ads, zoomers are listening; Spotify reports a 19% higher brand impact on ads on their platform compared to other media.
While Kao couldn’t share specific data, she reinforced that podcast ads are heard by both premium and free users – and that Canadian Gen Zs generated 103 million podcast streams on Spotify during the first six months of 2023 – a 60% increase from last year.
“Both premium and free users get ads in podcasts and we do not remove the ads from third-party podcasts,” she said. “So, likely most (if not all) of this content included advertising.”
Spotify sports over 100,000 video podcasts on its platform, and considering listeners usually spend 2.4 hours daily on the streaming service.
