by Mary Madden
As the array of individuals and mainstream media institutions providing podcasts has expanded rapidly — as well as the types of digital multimedia content available from the internet — so too has the audience for downloadable video, images and text.
A recent survey by the Pew Internet & American Life Project finds some 12% of internet users, roughly 17 million adults, say they have downloaded a podcast so they can listen to it or view it at a later time. This estimate reflects an increase from the 7% of internet users — about 10 million adults — who reported podcast downloading in our February-April 2006 survey. However, few internet users are downloading podcasts with great frequency; just 1% report downloading a podcast on a typical day.
Men are more likely than women to report podcast downloading; 15% of online men say they have downloaded a podcast, compared with just 8% of online women. And those with more than six years of online experience are twice as likely as those with less than three years of internet use to have downloaded a podcast (13% vs. 6%).
