The podcast gold rush—and what’s next

PATIENCE MUSA

Podcasting isn’t just booming,it’s humming, buzzing, surging like a restless current in the river of modern media.

Over 3.3 million shows now crowd the global airwaves, each one a voice in the digital night, calling out to be heard.

What began as a niche for techies and storytellers has become a gold rush. Seasoned broadcasters are slipping off their studio headphones, stepping into home offices and makeshift recording booths, chasing the magic of the on-demand audience.

Yet with so many chasing the same sparkle, a kind of photocopy culture has emerged—echoes of the same conversations, the same guests making the rounds like familiar travelling merchants, the same headlines dressed in slightly different clothes. In this race for relevance, it’s not enough to simply speak—you must speak louder, sharper, different.

Zimbabwe, too, is riding this wave.

Our podcasters – some seasoned media veterans, some fearless newcomers—are lighting up Spotify, TikTok, YouTube, and even WhatsApp groups with shows that pulse with local flavour. 2 Broke Twimbos, Sadza in the Morning, Family Wealth, How Far, Kumusha, The Friendzone, Byo Podcast and In Conversation with Trevor Ncube stand alongside lifestyle and entertainment voices like Friday Drinks, Haku Stream, and DJ Ollah’s own podcast Ollah 7 – just to mention a few.

They are the griots of our age, mixing banter with truth, nostalgia with revelation, politics with punchlines.

But here’s the knot in the rope—money.

Globally, podcasts are powered by advertising, sponsorships, and subscriptions. In Zimbabwe, sponsorship is cautious, conservative, selective.

Corporates, like careful gardeners, plant their investment in just a handful of shows with proven harvests of loyal listeners.

For everyone else, it’s a season of patient planting—relying on diaspora support, donations, or folding podcasting into other creative work. And because our audiences are outwardly conservative, standing out often requires stirring the waters—being just controversial enough to get the conversation flowing without tipping the whole boat over.

There’s a catch—Zimbabwe’s outwardly conservative audiences can be a tricky market to court.

Many shows that breakthrough have done so by leaning into controversy, sharp commentary, or viral, unfiltered conversations. It’s a balancing act: play it too safe, and you fade into the background; push the limits too far, and you risk public backlash—or worse.

It’s a risky dance. The recent storm in South Africa, when teenage hosts of Open Chats let racist remarks about the “coloured” community slip into their show, serves as a sharp reminder: the digital realm is no lawless frontier. Even when the setting feels casual, words weigh heavy, and the world listens with a long memory.

Still, the horizon looks promising. In 2023, 450 million people tuned into podcasts worldwide; by 2026, that number is set to swell past 619 million. The industry’s revenue could reach $25 billion by the early 2030s.

Formats are stretching their limbs—video podcasts blooming on YouTube, AI helping with production, and niche storytelling finding homes in corners the mainstream never reached.

For Zimbabwe, the future may lie in the very thing that sets us apart—our layered culture, our living languages, our diaspora’s longing for home. Imagine Shona and Ndebele storytelling pods that cross oceans. Imagine shows that break down policy in plain talk, that celebrate township artistry, that archive the pulse of Harare, Bulawayo and other Zimbabwean spaces for future ears. Already, some creators are recording in two languages, teasing episodes with quickfire TikTok clips, pulling listeners in like moths to a warm lamp.

Will podcasts still matter in five, ten years? Yes—but the survivors will be the ones who turn consistency into craft, who understand that attention is a currency spent only on those who truly deliver. Monetization will require invention: live shows, branded collaborations, merch that becomes part of the culture itself. And in a market this noisy, the quiet truth remains—the most powerful tool is not the mic, but the voice behind it.

Podcasts won’t kill the talk show—they will bend it, stretch it, reimagine it. In Zimbabwe, radio is still our daily bread, but now it comes with a podcast for dessert. The air is alive with possibility, and every time that red “record” light blinks on, it whispers the same promise: somewhere, someone is about to hear exactly what they didn’t know they needed