In recent years, there has been a disruption in the audio sector all over the world which can be considered as result of the digital consumption growth. Radio stations were not alien to this trend, and several broadcasters quickly began hosting podcasts and videocasts on their websites, on platforms such as Spotify, Apple podcasts, Sound cloud, or channels such as Youtube, with the aim of broadening its visibility, deepening and developing content, presented on air in a short form, and also reaching new and more diversified audiences.
Popcasts is the first platform that integrates and promotes only Portuguese language content, having as its main goal being a showcase of what is produced in Portugal. This new platform, launched in December of 2022, is not only trying to enlarge the visibility of the group’s stations podcasts and videocasts contents – Renascença, RFM, and MegaHits – but it also promoting independent producers work and even other media contributions.
The purpose of this paper is to present and analyse the first Portuguese podcast aggregator platform – Popcasts – whose publisher is the Renascença Multimedia Group, one of the main communication groups in Portugal. This study aims to identify the platform’s main formats (solo, co-host, interview, narrative, round table, among others) and categories (comedy, politics, economy, sports, lifestyle, religion, health…), their periodicity, and main components (sound effects, music, jingles), in order to draw some conclusions about its audiences’ preferences on national podcasts offer. It will also reveal if the professional radio podcasts are more listed than the independent ones and will quantify the ones which are specifically created from scratch to be authentic podcasts or just a reproduction of what is presented on air.
To carry out this research, semi-structured interviews were conducted with the group’s digital editorial collaborators. Further information followed a site content analysis methodology, and a recent literature review on podcasting.
The article’s scientific novelty relies on the fact of being the first study about the first Portuguese podcast aggregator platform and can contribute to a better understanding of a national response significative sample to Portuguese language’s podcasts, since it aggregates more than hundred podcasts.
| Period | 7 Sept 2023 |
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| Event title | 7th Radio and Sound Conference: Radio and Sound Ecosystems in the Platform Age |
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| Event type | Conference |
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| Location | Barcelona, SpainShow on map |
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- Podcast
- Portugal
- Popcasts
- Videocasts
- Renascença Multimedia Group
- Contents
