Shaking up the podcasting industry, Joe Rogan‘s latest £82.15m deal with Spotify has inspired Brits to enrol on a free-online podcasting course with FutureLearn. The leading social learning platform today revealed it has seen a 613% increase in UK enrolments on the course since November.
As the UK podcast boom continues to rise, 58% of employed Brits, bored at home during lockdown, want a piece of the action. It’s not just the UK, as millennials across the globe are driving the trend with nearly a quarter (24%) signing up to The Power of Podcasting for Storytelling. Closely followed by over a (22%) of the TikTok generation, 18-25 year olds.
The course initially launched in 2018, however the most recent run is more popular than ever. The course has seen a huge female up-take with 60% joining the course, keen to learn and get their voices heard by millions.
Podcasting has seen a boom in recent years with the international market value set to hit $1billion in 20211 and as of April 2020, there were over 1,000,000 podcasts2. The market has transformed in recent years from tech reviews to engaging series covering a host of topics including sport, comedy and food. Stars have grown their careers in new directions through the power of podcasting with the likes of Peter Crouch and That Peter Crouch Podcast, Alice Levine and friends in My Dad Wrote a Porno and Ed Gamble and James Acaster tantalising the nation’s taste buds with Off Menu.
“We’re in the podcast gold rush years,” says Matt Deegan, who co-runs the British Podcast Awards. “But it can definitely get even bigger. Lockdown has given many people the time they’ve needed to start their podcast, but with all the competition out there it makes sense to learn how to do it properly.
“There’s been a spate of big money podcast deals over the last 12 months, and this comes from big companies who want to generate scale so they can compete with other platforms and reach a generally younger, upmarket audience who don’t consume many other ad-funded media.”
The free two-week course is available on FutureLearn and run by the University of Wollongong and led by award winning podcast producer, author and critic Siobhan McHugh. Brits can study for just 3 hours a week for free and explore why a podcast is such a powerful platform for storytelling, how to write a narrative to suit audio, common pitfalls, and how to produce a podcast so Brits can get started right away. To sign up, The Power of Podcasting for Storytelling visit: https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/podcasting
