26.3% of podcasters say their main show is an interview recorded remotely, nearly three times the 9.5% who interview guests in the same room (The Podcast Host, Podcast Gear and Software Survey 2024). Video is raising the stakes on those remote sessions: the 50 biggest US shows drew 56% of their March 2026 delivery from video (Podtrac, Multi-Channel Podcast Ranking March 2026), and 57% of Americans age 12+ have now both listened to and watched a podcast (Edison Research, The Infinite Dial 2026). Meanwhile, the Opus codec that every WebRTC browser call must support targets just 28-40 kbit/s for fullband speech (IETF, RFC 6716), which is the core argument for the double-ender method. We aggregated data from Edison Research, Pew Research Center, Podtrac, Listen Notes, The Podcast Host, Sounds Profitable, the IETF standards track, and company disclosures reported by TechCrunch and Calcalist. For the audience side of the video shift, see our video podcast statistics.
TL;DR
- 3,832,281 podcasts are indexed worldwide as of November 2026 (Listen Notes, Podcast Stats 2026).
- New podcast launches jumped from 334,959 in 2019 to 1,020,444 in 2020, the first pandemic year (Listen Notes, Podcast Stats 2026).
- Remote formats outnumber in-person formats 38.2% to 18.8% as a podcaster’s main show type (The Podcast Host, Podcast Gear and Software Survey 2024).
- 17% of US adults have tried creating a podcast, but only 12% remain active creators (Sounds Profitable, The Creators 2025).
- An uncompressed 48 kHz, 16-bit mono track carries 768 kbit/s, roughly 19 to 27 times the Opus target for fullband speech (IETF, RFC 6716; our calculation).
- Riverside reached 80 million dollars in total funding after a 30 million dollar Series C (TechCrunch, December 2024).
- Descript bought SquadCast in August 2023 for an undisclosed price (Descript press release via Sounds Profitable 2023; TinySeed).
- The top 50 US podcasts drew 56% of their March 2026 delivery from video, up from 51% in February (Podtrac, Multi-Channel Podcast Ranking 2026).
- 57% of Americans age 12+ have both listened to and watched a podcast, up from 48% a year earlier (Edison Research, The Infinite Dial 2026).
- 76% of top-ranked US podcasts brought on at least one guest in 2022 (Pew Research Center, Most Top-Ranked Podcasts Bring On Guests 2024).
1. Production Volume: The Pandemic Spike That Made Remote Recording the Default
The launch curve explains why remote recording tools exist at the scale they do. New podcasts jumped to 1,020,444 in 2020, roughly three times the 334,959 launched in 2019 (1,020,444 / 334,959 = 3.05), according to the Listen Notes podcast index. That surge coincided with pandemic lockdowns, when studios closed and guests could not travel, the conditions under which a call replaced the shared room for many new shows.
The launch wave has since cooled to about a fifth of its peak (211,172 / 1,020,444 = 0.21), yet yearly episode output is only about 13% lower than in 2020 (27,363,320 / 31,410,453 = 0.87). That is the more important number for recording platforms: the market is no longer a gold rush of new shows but a steady base of established producers who record every week, with a monthly audience of 167 million Americans to serve.
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Podcasts indexed worldwide (as of November 2026) | 3,832,281 | Listen Notes, Podcast Stats 2026 |
| New podcasts launched in 2019 (last year before the pandemic) | 334,959 | Listen Notes, Podcast Stats 2026 |
| New podcasts launched in 2020 | 1,020,444 | Listen Notes, Podcast Stats 2026 |
| New podcasts launched in 2021 | 751,399 | Listen Notes, Podcast Stats 2026 |
| New podcasts launched in 2025 | 211,172 | Listen Notes, Podcast Stats 2026 |
| New episodes published in 2020 vs in 2025 | 31,410,453 vs 27,363,320 | Listen Notes, Podcast Stats 2026 |
| Americans age 12+ who consumed a podcast in the last month (2026) | 58% (167 million) | Edison Research, The Infinite Dial 2026 |
Context note: the same index counts 124,559 new podcasts so far in 2026, a partial year, so it should not be compared with full-year totals until the year closes. Index counts include inactive feeds; they measure how many shows were created, not how many are still recording.
2. Remote vs In-Person: How Shows Are Actually Recorded
The most direct measure of remote production comes from creators describing their own main show. In a 2024 survey of 511 podcasters, remote formats (remote interviews plus remote co-hosts) add up to 38.2% of main shows, against 18.8% for in-person formats, a ratio of about two to one (38.2 / 18.8 = 2.03). Put simply, for independent creators the remote call is the normal studio, and the shared room is the exception.
A smaller Castos survey of 99 creators (March 2026) points the same way without percentages: remote recording platforms were the most common production setup, and local software was usually used alongside a remote platform rather than instead of one. The creator pool itself is unstable, though. Nearly one in three people who start a podcast stop, which means a meaningful slice of remote recording users at any moment are shows that will not last.
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Podcasters whose main show is an interview recorded remotely | 26.3% | The Podcast Host, Podcast Gear and Software Survey 2024 (n=511) |
| Podcasters whose main show has a regular co-host recorded remotely | 11.9% | The Podcast Host, Podcast Gear and Software Survey 2024 |
| Podcasters whose main show is an interview recorded in person | 9.5% | The Podcast Host, Podcast Gear and Software Survey 2024 |
| Podcasters whose main show has a regular co-host recorded in person | 9.3% | The Podcast Host, Podcast Gear and Software Survey 2024 |
| All remote formats combined vs all in-person formats combined (26.3 + 11.9 vs 9.5 + 9.3) | 38.2% vs 18.8% | Calculation from The Podcast Host, Podcast Gear and Software Survey 2024 |
| US adults 18+ who have ever tried creating a podcast vs who are still active creators | 17% vs 12% | Sounds Profitable and Signal Hill Insights, The Creators 2025 (n=5,035) |
| Podcast creators who stopped after starting | Nearly 1 in 3 | Sounds Profitable and Signal Hill Insights, The Creators 2025 |
Outlier note: the 2024 survey reaches the publisher’s own readers, who skew toward independent and hobbyist shows; large network productions with in-house studios are underrepresented. The remaining share of respondents ran solo shows or other formats, which need no guest connection at all.
3. Double-Ender vs Call Recording: The Bitrate Gap
A double-ender means each participant is recorded on their own device, at full quality, while the conversation itself runs over an ordinary low-latency call; the separate files are uploaded afterwards and lined up on one timeline. Call recording, by contrast, captures only what the call delivered, after compression and any network losses. The gap between the two is measurable. Browser calls use the codecs required by WebRTC, the web standard for real-time audio and video, and the Opus codec’s own specification names 28-40 kbit/s as the “sweet spot” for fullband speech, while an uncompressed 48 kHz, 16-bit mono track runs at 768 kbit/s (48,000 samples per second x 16 bits = 768,000 bit/s). That is roughly 19 to 27 times more data per voice (768 / 40 = 19.2; 768 / 28 = 27.4), according to IETF RFC 6716.
Bitrate is not the same thing as perceived quality, since Opus is designed to sound good at low rates. The real case for the double-ender is robustness: a local file does not inherit the dropouts, jitter and concealment artifacts of a live connection, a problem covered in our WebRTC packet loss concealment statistics. The vendor figures below are each company’s own claim, not independent measurements.
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Opus codec bitrate range | 6 kbit/s to 510 kbit/s | IETF, RFC 6716 (2012) |
| Opus “sweet spot” bitrate for fullband speech (20 ms frames) | 28-40 kbit/s | IETF, RFC 6716 (2012) |
| Opus effective sample rate, narrowband mode vs fullband mode | 8 kHz vs 48 kHz | IETF, RFC 6716 (2012) |
| Audio codecs every WebRTC endpoint must implement | Opus and G.711 (PCMA/PCMU) | IETF, RFC 7874 (2016) |
| Uncompressed 48 kHz, 16-bit mono track (48,000 x 16) | 768 kbit/s | Calculation from the 48 kHz, 16-bit spec below |
| Local recording format (vendor’s own claim) | 48 kHz sample rate, 16-bit depth, WAV or MP3 | SquadCast, Audio Recording tool page |
| Local recording format (vendor’s own claim) | Uncompressed 48 kHz WAV audio, up to 4K video | Riverside, FAQ |
| Participants per recording on separate audio and video tracks (vendor’s own claim) | Up to 10 (9 guests + the host) | Riverside, FAQ |
Context note: RFC 6716 dates from 2012 and RFC 7874 from 2016, but both remain the current Internet standards for these codecs; they are older than three years because the codec has not been replaced, not because the data is stale. RFC 7874 also notes that WebRTC audio can be sampled at any rate from 8 to 48 kHz, so a call’s real quality depends on what each side negotiates.
4. Platform Scale, Funding and Consolidation
Disclosed funding in remote recording is modest by venture standards. Riverside had raised 80 million dollars in total after its 30 million dollar Series C on December 9, 2024 (Calcalist), and it told TechCrunch it was not yet profitable and aimed to be by the end of 2026. On May 20, 2026 the company moved to the riverside.com name and described itself as used by “millions of users”, without an exact count (Riverside press release). Riverside also told Calcalist that “80% of top podcasters” use its platform; that is the company’s own claim and no independent source confirms it.
The other path was consolidation. Descript, an editor, bought SquadCast, a double-ender recorder, in a deal announced on August 15, 2023 (Descript press release via Sounds Profitable) at a price that was not disclosed, and included remote recording in Descript subscriptions at no extra cost (TinySeed). Independent usage data tells a humbler story than the funding: among podcasters naming their recording software, the dedicated tools barely outpace a general meeting app.
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Riverside Series C round (December 9, 2024) | 30 million dollars | TechCrunch, December 2024 |
| Riverside total funding to date after the Series C | 80 million dollars | Calcalist, December 2024 |
| Riverside headcount at the time of the Series C | Roughly 160-170 people | TechCrunch, December 2024 |
| Minutes recorded on Riverside in 2024 (company’s own claim) | Over 100 million | Riverside, via TechCrunch December 2024 |
| Descript Series C led by the OpenAI Startup Fund (November 15, 2022) / total raised | 50 million dollars / 100 million dollars | TechCrunch, November 2022 |
| Descript reported valuation in 2022 vs in January 2021 | Around 550 million dollars vs 260 million dollars | The Information, via TechCrunch November 2022 |
| SquadCast acquisition by Descript | Announced August 15, 2023; price not disclosed | Sounds Profitable (Descript press release) 2023; TinySeed |
| Podcasters naming each tool as their recording software: Riverside / Zoom / SquadCast | 7.9% / 6.9% / 3.4% | The Podcast Host, Podcast Gear and Software Survey 2024 |
Recency note: Descript’s funding figures date from November 2022. Most recent available data: TechCrunch, 2022; Descript has not announced a later round. Zencastr, the oldest of the group (founded in late 2014), is also older data: it raised a 4.6 million dollar seed round in February 2021 and claimed at the time to serve around 6% of all podcasts, based on its own estimate of 800,000 to 1.2 million active shows (Zencastr, via TechCrunch 2021). Editing is where much of the time on a multitrack recording goes; see our freelance podcast audio editor rates for that side of the budget.
5. Video Is Turning Recording Sessions Into Multicam Shoots
Video is what pushed remote recording from “good audio” to “separate camera files for every guest”. In monthly multi-channel measurement of US shows, the top 50 podcasts drew 56% of their March 2026 delivery from video, up from 51% in February (Podtrac, March 2026; February 2026). The ranking combines audio episodes posted to RSS feeds with video episodes posted to platforms such as YouTube and Spotify, and podcast clips are not used to determine rank. Below the top 50, the picture flips: shows ranked 51 to 200 still get about three quarters of their delivery from audio.
The audience moved first. Edison Research reports that video podcast consumption has surpassed audio-only consumption in its Podcast Metrics data since late 2025, and only 21% of Americans age 12+ now listen to podcasts without ever watching one (Digital Content Next, June 2026). For a remote show, that turns every guest’s webcam into a production asset, which is exactly what local, per-participant video recording was built to capture.
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Americans age 12+ who have both listened to and watched a podcast, 2025 vs 2026 | 48% vs 57% | Edison Research, The Infinite Dial 2025 and 2026 |
| Americans age 12+ who listen but never watch vs who watch but never listen | 21% vs 2% | Edison Research, The Podcast Consumer 2026 (via Digital Content Next) |
| Share of top 50 US podcasts’ delivery coming from video, February vs March 2026 | 51% vs 56% | Podtrac, Multi-Channel Podcast Ranking 2026 |
| Share of delivery coming from video for podcasts ranked 51 to 200 (March 2026) | 24% | Podtrac, Multi-Channel Podcast Ranking March 2026 |
| Top 200 US podcasts posting video episodes to YouTube vs to Spotify (March 2026) | 127 (64%) vs 44 (22%) | Podtrac, Multi-Channel Podcast Ranking March 2026 |
| Top 200 US podcasts getting most of their delivery from video (March 2026) | 60 (30%) | Podtrac, Multi-Channel Podcast Ranking March 2026 |
| Active video podcast creators using YouTube as their primary podcast platform | 43% | Sounds Profitable and Signal Hill Insights, The Creators 2025 |
Context note: the top 50 split moves from month to month, so a single month should be read as a level, not a trend.
6. Guests and Interviews: The Demand Remote Recording Serves
Guests are the reason most podcasts need a remote setup at all: a solo host can record anywhere, but a guest often does not share the host’s room. The Pew Research Center audit of 2022 episodes found that 76% of top-ranked US podcasts brought on at least one guest, yet a guest appeared in only about one-third of their roughly 24,000 episodes. Guests are common across shows but occasional within each show, which favors tools that make a one-off guest’s setup painless over tools built for a fixed studio crew.
The guest pool is also wide and shallow: most guests appeared only once during the year. That is a recording problem as much as a booking problem, since every first-time guest arrives with an unknown microphone, room and connection. Strict interview formats remain a minority of shows (23% of top-ranked shows in 2022, and 31% among independent creators in 2025), so guests also turn up regularly in shows that are not built as interview programs.
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Top-ranked US podcasts that brought on at least one guest in 2022 | 76% | Pew Research Center, Most Top-Ranked Podcasts Bring On Guests 2024 |
| Top-ranked podcasts that featured guests regularly (in 50% to 89% of episodes) | 22% | Pew Research Center, Most Top-Ranked Podcasts Bring On Guests 2024 |
| Episodes analyzed vs share that included a guest | 24,004 vs about one-third | Pew Research Center, Most Top-Ranked Podcasts Bring On Guests 2024 |
| People who appeared as guests vs total guest appearances (2022) | More than 7,000 vs almost 11,000 | Pew Research Center, Most Top-Ranked Podcasts Bring On Guests 2024 |
| Guests who appeared only one time in 2022 | 78% | Pew Research Center, Most Top-Ranked Podcasts Bring On Guests 2024 |
| Top-ranked podcasts using an interview format in every episode | 23% | Pew Research Center, Podcast Format 2023 |
| Active independent creators making interview shows vs solo shows (2025) | 31% vs 31% | The Podcast Host, Independent Podcaster Survey 2025 |
Recency note: both studies analyze episodes from 2022, so they are older than three years in data terms. Most recent available data: Pew Research Center, 2024. True crime is the outlier genre: just over half (56%) of top true crime shows brought on a guest at all, against 85% of entertainment shows, in the same 2024 audit.
Summary: Remote Podcast Recording Double-Ender Platform by the Numbers
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Podcasts indexed worldwide (November 2026) | 3,832,281 | Listen Notes, Podcast Stats 2026 |
| New podcasts launched in 2019 vs in 2020 | 334,959 vs 1,020,444 | Listen Notes, Podcast Stats 2026 |
| Americans age 12+ who consumed a podcast in the last month (2026) | 58% (167 million) | Edison Research, The Infinite Dial 2026 |
| Podcasters whose main show is a remote interview vs an in-person interview | 26.3% vs 9.5% | The Podcast Host, Podcast Gear and Software Survey 2024 |
| US adults who have tried creating a podcast vs who are still active | 17% vs 12% | Sounds Profitable and Signal Hill Insights, The Creators 2025 |
| Opus “sweet spot” bitrate for fullband speech | 28-40 kbit/s | IETF, RFC 6716 |
| Uncompressed 48 kHz, 16-bit mono track | 768 kbit/s | Calculation (48,000 x 16) |
| WebRTC audio sampling range | 8 to 48 kHz | IETF, RFC 7874 |
| Riverside Series C / total funding (December 2024) | 30 million / 80 million dollars | TechCrunch, December 2024 |
| Descript Series C / total raised (November 2022) | 50 million / 100 million dollars | TechCrunch, November 2022 |
| SquadCast acquisition by Descript | August 15, 2023; price not disclosed | Sounds Profitable (Descript press release) 2023 |
| Share of top 50 US podcasts’ delivery from video (March 2026) | 56% | Podtrac, Multi-Channel Podcast Ranking March 2026 |
| Top 200 US podcasts getting most of their delivery from video | 60 (30%) | Podtrac, Multi-Channel Podcast Ranking March 2026 |
| Americans age 12+ who have both listened to and watched a podcast, 2025 vs 2026 | 48% vs 57% | Edison Research, The Infinite Dial 2025 and 2026 |
| Top-ranked US podcasts with at least one guest in 2022 | 76% | Pew Research Center, 2024 |
Methodology and Sources
- Listen Notes, Podcast Stats (index updated November 6, 2026): listennotes.com/podcast-stats
- Edison Research at SSRS, The Infinite Dial 2026 press release (March 13, 2026): podnews.net; The Infinite Dial 2025 press release (March 21, 2025): podnews.net
- Edison Research, The Podcast Consumer 2026 and Edison Podcast Metrics, as reported by Digital Content Next (June 16, 2026): digitalcontentnext.org
- The Podcast Host, Podcast Gear and Software Survey 2024 (n=511, July 9, 2024): thepodcasthost.com/gear24; Independent Podcaster Survey 2025 (December 3, 2025): thepodcasthost.com
- Castos, Podcast Production in 2026 (n=99, March 2026), qualitative findings only: castos.com
- Sounds Profitable and Signal Hill Insights, The Creators 2025 (n=5,035): soundsprofitable.com
- IETF, RFC 6716 Definition of the Opus Audio Codec (September 2012): rfc-editor.org; RFC 7874 WebRTC Audio Codec and Processing Requirements (May 2016): rfc-editor.org
- Riverside, FAQ (vendor’s own claims): riverside.com/faq; SquadCast, Audio Recording tool page (vendor’s own claims): squadcast.fm
- TechCrunch, Riverside Series C (December 9, 2024): techcrunch.com; Descript Series C (November 15, 2022): techcrunch.com; Zencastr seed round (February 16, 2021): techcrunch.com; Zencastr editing and distribution (August 22, 2022): techcrunch.com
- Calcalist, Riverside Series C (December 9, 2024): calcalistech.com
- Descript press release on the SquadCast acquisition, via Sounds Profitable (August 15, 2023): soundsprofitable.com; TinySeed acquisition note: tinyseed.com
- Podtrac, Multi-Channel Podcast Ranking, March 2026 (April 22, 2026): analytics.podtrac.com; February 2026 (March 19, 2026): analytics.podtrac.com
- Pew Research Center, Most Top-Ranked Podcasts Bring On Guests (February 6, 2024): pewresearch.org; Podcast Format (June 15, 2023): pewresearch.org
- Data watch: no independent census measures what share of all podcast episodes are recorded as double-enders; the remote vs in-person split here comes from a self-selected creator survey, and the platform usage figures (100 million minutes, “80% of top podcasters”, “millions of users”, Zencastr’s 6% of podcasts) are company claims that no third party has audited. Zencastr’s 2021 seed round is reported as 4.6 million dollars in TechCrunch’s February 2021 article but as a 4.1 million dollar raise in TechCrunch’s August 2022 article; we use the figure from the funding announcement itself. Edison’s 57% “listened and watched” figure appears in the Infinite Dial 2026 press release, while Digital Content Next attributes the same number to The Podcast Consumer 2026; the Infinite Dial 2026 press release does not state its sample size. Listen Notes 2026 counts cover a partial year. Both Pew studies analyze 2022 episodes, and Descript’s funding data dates from 2022. Interview Valet’s 2026 State of Podcast Guesting report includes recording platform shares, but we could not access the full report and left it out.
Last updated: November 7, 2026. We update this roundup quarterly, and the next refresh is expected when Edison Research publishes The Infinite Dial 2027 and Podtrac releases its next Multi-Channel Podcast Ranking.