China’s podcasting: a bite of current stats

China Web2.0 Review points to recent statistics (originally translated by cwr, edited by me) from Jack Gu’s blog (Gu Shaofeng), founder of Chinese podcast aggregator Podlook. Gu notes that, despite the numbers below, he and other Chinese experts are seeing a plateau in terms of quality of content and number of listeners. “On the one hand,” he writes, “there’s too little good, ongoing content.  And on the other, the mass audience doesn’t have enough of an attention span.”

CWR adds context: Podlook is the largest podcasting directory in China.
Though a Podlook-based data analysis may not reflect the exact whole
picture of Chinese podosphere, and the development of Podlook’s
platform itself in [the last six] months also influences its findings and
conclusion, the report and data is still very useful and important for
us to understand Chinese podosphere.

1. In May 2006 there were over 33,000 podcasters [on Podlook], a 70%
growth compared with January 2006. The number of podcasts was nearly 145,000, nearly tripling during the same time period.

2.  Education and criticism genres are most popular, but most podcast content focuses on entertainment and personal life.

2. 15.6% of podcasters produced at least 5 episodes, compared with less than 8% four months ago.

3. 22% of podcasts were video, up from 17% four months ago; 1% were Flash; 77% were audio.

4. About 23% of Podlook podcasts were aired at least 10 times, up 15% from four months ago; nearly 80% were aired less than 10 times.

5. Many new podcast hosting sites emerged in the period from January to May —
especially those which provide audio and/or video services.

6.  It’s unclear what the author means exactly, but it is said that “independent” podcasts are very popular, but very rare: less than 2% of the total.

Get the stats (in Chinese) here.