It is Saturday at noon, a day of electoral reflection, and it is surprising to see the very long queue, made up mainly of women between the ages of thirty and forty, at the doors of the Victòria del Paral·lel theater in Barcelona. Clearly, they are not going to see Mago Pop. Neither magic, nor theater, although it is quite a show: they have bought a ticket to see the live recording of the popular Deforme Semanal Ideal Total podcast. Once inside, just a table on the large stage dressed with the Radio Primavera Sound logo –within whose programming the podcast is included–, two discreet floors –without the need for a balcony– and two microphones.
When the creators and protagonists of Deforme Semanal go on stage, in the theater, packed with more than 1,200 people, madness breaks out. For the next hour, Lucia Lijtmaer and Isa Calderón discuss women on the loose, from former dominatrix schools to Olympia de Gouges and her Declaration of Women's Rights. That he sent a Marie Antoinette with little interest and who is portrayed in perpetual sexual ruckus. Not happy, they cancel the French Revolution, dance Cher's Believe or Mónica Naranjo's Sobreviviré. And the subspecies of men are left at the gates of the correctional facility. The climax comes when they break down –and dance to– the Spice Girls' Wannabe as one of the most revolutionary hymns for modern women... even if they didn't know it. The theater continually erupts in laughter until the dance and the final huge applause.
The Deforme Semanal podcast by Lucía Lijtmaer and Isa Calderón has 400,000 monthly listeners, says Marta Salicrú, director of Radio Primavera Sound, at the end of the show. And she recalls that "in the US, the podcast has been another means of communication for 15 years, although here it has exploded especially in 2020 with the confinement." In fact, these audio programs that can be consumed at any time of the day by the listener do not stop growing. With proposals that range from the successful conversational podcast, such as Deforme Semanal, Estirando el chicle, Gent de merda or Tardeo, to the triumph of true crime –the podcasts on true crimes–, but also through information, children's, pure fiction –El gran apagón, Guerra 3–, learning or more experimental proposals, such as Ecos, by Jorge Carrión.
A market whose consumption is the only one that grows every year in the world of digital audio, while listening to music or online radio decreases, and which forecasts 26.6 million listeners in Spain by 2026 from the 17.9 that there was at the end of 2021. A market that that last year already accounted for 1,900 million dollars in advertising revenue globally, according to the consultancy PwC.
"The podcast in Spain has been going on for a decade, Ivoox, which was the pioneering platform, started in 2013, but now we are in the take-off phase, in the last five years the audio industry in Spanish has grown a lot," says Javier Celaya, of the consulting firm DosDoce and who was responsible for the launch in Spain of the great Danish platform for podcasts and audiobooks Podimo, which competes in a market that includes Ivoox, Sonora, Spotify, Audible, Amazon music, Podium, Cuonda and even cultural platforms like CaixaForum , which makes a great commitment to the medium.
To give an idea of the possibilities of the podcast market, Celaya points out that in the US they foresee income of 4,000 million dollars in just three more years. And he says that today 40% of Spaniards listen to them, “many times radio programs are delayed, but what is growing is the content originally born in this format. It is the growth that occurs in the US or the UK”. Of course, in Spain, he says, the entertainment ones rule: “Conversational podcasts rule, which comes a lot from our habit of listening to the radio, one person talking to another, the interview, they laugh, many have an entertainment tone. 70% is pure entertainment, while in Latin America it is the opposite, 60% is learning, personal development, people want to use down time learning something, use the podcast to catch up”. And he warns that if fiction podcasts have not taken off, because people prefer audiovisual fiction, they will do so as in other countries, and notes that the children's podcast will also take off, which has already taken off in northern Europe, and other trend will be great athletes with their own podcast interpreting sporting events.
Nacho Gallego, professor at the Carlos III University and content director of the Estación Podcast festival in Madrid, stresses that it is a differential medium and that it has come to save radio, which it is changing. He talks about his connection with his audience, his ability to generate spaces where different things are discussed and his power to generate communities like the ones that fill the theaters where Deforme Semanal goes.
“We are in a moment like when the radio was built, in which the radio soap operas that came from the theater reach it, but at the same time the first sports broadcasts were generated, a specific genre of radio. Something similar is happening with podcasts, different ways of doing things are being created," Gallego explains, and recalls that genres that had practically disappeared from radio, such as fiction or documentary, are now important within podcasts, "especially investigative documentary, very interesting things are being done and they work with the concept of series, which establishes a difference with respect to the radio medium”.
In addition, he says, it is a medium with few barriers to entry, anyone can make a podcast, and it is an opportunity for talented people. And he believes that it will be especially important for the cultural world, in which publishers such as Anagrama already have their own podcast and music companies and festivals such as Primavera Sound and Subterfuge Records create podcast platforms “because in the end they are companies used to working with sound. , the podcast is much more similar in its way of circulating to music than to radio.
Precisely Carlos Galán, founder of Subterfuge Radio and author of the podcast Sympathy for the music industry, says that the radio had lost its direct connection with youth and has connected with generation Z with phenomena such as the podcast La Pija y la Quinqui, for which that even Rosalía has happened. “The other day I was reading that podcasts are the new newscast for generation Z. A message that is word, reflection, has connected with both a 16-year-old boy and a 60-year-old who likes history or a 50-year-old who likes history. like mystery or neuroscience. The current variety is very extensive, ”he reasons.
A variety that includes bets such as that of the online platform CaixaForum, which works well with podcasts such as The Three Pipes Club, extensive interviews with creators, or La coleccionista, for music, and that has bets such as Con music elsewhere, a classical podcast. The director of the platform, Mireia Gubern, highlights "the freedom it gives us to move, you can share it with other things, run, drive, continue with our lives, and the freedom of creation that it allows". "It's a format for the future, everyone is looking here," he highlights, and talks about the possibility of experimenting as they are doing now with a podcast by CaboSanRoque and El Conde de Torrefiel, who propose a podcast, Cuerpos celestes, which requires the listener go to a cemetery to listen to him and follow his instructions. There will also be in bars, forests...
One of the creators who has a podcast on this platform is Jorge Carrión, with Ecos, who is strongly committed to rehearsal and sound experimentation. The author of books such as Contra Amazon and the Ondas Award for the Solaris podcast, which in 18 chapters reviewed the keys to understanding our times, from polyamory to Mars, cites referential podcasts for him such as the Latin American chronicles of Radio Ambulante and the fictions El gran apagón and War 3 and BBC Earth's high-quality science documentary podcasts. He recognizes that sound has occupied a leading role in our lives that it did not have ten years ago. "There was fierce competition for visual attention and that's when they realized that there was a niche for hearing, that there were many moments of the day when you couldn't be looking carefully but you could be listening carefully," although he warns that this it may already have been saturated in the face of freely rising production.
