Podcasts are often associated with your morning commute or drive, but Spotify’s latest finding shows that mornings are not the most popular time for podcasts.
The music streaming giant looked at what a typical day of music and podcast listening looks like for their listeners–and discovered that podcast listening peaked during the middle of the day. Interestingly, when they looked at weekday numbers versus the weekend, people listened to fewer podcasts on the weekend. In fact, the drop off is pretty significant, 45% to be exact.
The finding raises some questions. Why are so many people listening to podcasts in the middle of the workday? Are they doing it on their lunch break? Are they multi-tasking? Slacking off? Has podcast listening become the new social media scrolling?
Interestingly, Spotify also found that different types of podcasts peaked at different times of the day. News podcasts were more popular in the morning, whereas longform and niche podcasts like Malcolm Gladwell’s Revisionist History were more popular during the day, at times when people are supposed to be working.
While listening to podcasts can make you smarter, we all know that multi-tasking isn’t the best for producing quality work. After all, building a spreadsheet and listening to Gladwell’s history lesson about at top secret project in Saigon during the 1960s both require intense concentration. Doing both at the same time just leads to wasted hours.
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