The American audience for podcasts is small but continues to increase---slowly---says a recent survey from Pew Internet & American Life Project. Podcasts, for the uninitiated, are audio and/or video digital media files that users can download, stream or syndicate, from the podcaster’s or podcast aggregator’s website.

19% of all Internet users have downloaded a podcast to listen to, or view later, up from 12% in August, 2006.

Of that 19%, just 17% download a podcast on a typical day.

The audience for podcast downloads skews 22% of online males, versus 16% of online females. And the target audience is younger; 23% of those who have downloaded a podcast are less than 50 years of age versus 13% of those 50+.

Not surprisingly, 43% of internet users who own an iPod or MP3 player have downloaded a podcast.

BTW, one of the groups most familiar with podcast downloads are college students, according to Pew. Some colleges provide lectures in podcast format, while some instructors are requiring students to submit work in podcast versus traditional term papers.

Source: Pew Internet Project Data Memo on Podcast Downloading, 8/28/2008

For the full Pew report visit: http://www.pewinternet.org/pdfs/PIP_Podcast_2008_Memo.pdf