A short history of podcasting: from 2014 to 2024

April 10, 2024

In 2014, the general public discovered, captivated, the first season of the American podcast Serial, a documentary proposition mixing storytelling, journalistic investigation and original music produced by the Serial productions studio and directed by journalist Sarah Koenig as part of her This American Life program.

Four years later, in 2018, seasons 1 and 2 of the podcast totaled 340 million downloads, putting Serial on a par with, if not higher than, the most popular of Netflix productions.

This major success, while still exceptional to date, is rooted in a history of more than two decades of development in the podcast creation sector, a sector that is particularly abundant in the United States and the French-speaking world.

Quebec’s first podcast producers

The podcast craze has not left our corner of the world behind. Since 2016 alone, Quebec has seen the emergence of numerous studios and production organizations, including Magnéto (2016), Transistor (2017), La puce à l’oreille (2018), Recréation (2019), Boréal (2020), Goscript (2021) and Virage sonore (2022), whose podcast productions join those created by independent media or media production companies, or by organizations from the traditional arts, museology or other sectors, as well as those produced by a multitude of independent creators.

At the same time, the major broadcasters have also thrown themselves massively into the podcasting adventure, both as broadcasters and producers, with podcasts going online on Télé-Québec’s website as early as 2017, and the creation of Québecor’s QUb Radio platform in 2018 and Radio-Canada’s Ohdio platform in 2019.

Festivals and gatherings have also sprung up, starting with the renowned Festival de la radio numérique, whose next edition kicks off on April 24 in Gatineau. Internationally, Quebec is also making a name for itself, participating in numerous festivals and showcases dedicated to podcast production (the prestigious Paris podcast festival has invited a large Quebec delegation to its 2022 edition) and winning major awards, such as the prize for best narrative and documentary content awarded to the Dérives podcast (Radio-Canada) at the 2021 edition of the New York Festivals Radio Awards.

Cause or consequence of this proliferation, listening numbers have also risen sharply. Today, according to the latest figures collected by the Observatoire des technologies médias (OTM) in the spring of 2023, there has been a 47% increase in podcast listening between 2019 and 2022, reaching a percentage of 26% of French-speaking Canadians who say they listen to podcasts in 2023 (this figure was 10% in 2017!). This volume is particularly high among young francophones aged 18 to 35, who, again according to OTM data, are nearly half of all podcast listeners.

Podcasts and NUMIX AWARDS

Today, thousands of French-language audio productions from Quebec are available online, covering a wide variety of subjects, from humor to history, not forgetting social debates, fictional stories, intimate explorations, testimonials and even proposals for young people.

Among the wide variety of Quebec submissions, several hundred try their luck each year at the PRIX NUMIX. In fact, since 2018, the digital production competition has included podcasts among the productions considered and, in view of the craze generated, has even had to divide podcast production into several sub-categories, such as Podcast – Fiction and Experimental, Podcast – Social Issue or Podcast – History, Culture and Science!

It will probably be exciting to see how the podcasting sector continues to develop in the years to come! Between the democratization of artificial intelligence, the development of new training courses for creators, and the ever-renewed interest of audiences, it’s a safe bet that the next few years will be exhilarating for podcast producers and listeners!

Learn more

Read more: PRIX NUMIX: 5 balados à (re)découvrir!

Crédit photo: Canva (Magic Studio A.I.)