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How long should a podcast episode be? · Business Podcasting: Production Strategy

• 0:00
  [Synthetic version of Lam Hoang's voice]
• 0:07
  This is Business Podcasting: Production Strategy, produced by WorkHacker.
• 0:12
  I'm your host, Lam Hoang, co-founder of WorkHacker.
• 0:16
  You're hearing a synthetic version of my voice.
• 0:19
  Each episode I take one question about making a podcast for your business,
• 0:23
  tell you what I would do and how solid the evidence is.
• 0:32
  Today's question: how long should a podcast episode be?
• 0:36
  When twelve hundred listeners were asked why they'd
• 0:38
  left a podcast, length wasn't among the top answers.
• 0:42
  The top two?
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  A start full of meaningless chat.
• 0:46
  Or a show that was just boring.
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  That survey was first presented in 2025.
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  It's what people said, not what anyone measured.
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  So how do you set a length at all?
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  Here's where I land.
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  The length of an episode should follow the kind of content you make.
• 1:02
  First decide what your show should be known for, and what goes into it.
• 1:06
  That picks the format.
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  And the format sets the length.
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  Then keep only what's worth your listener's time.
• 1:13
  And get to it fast.
• 1:14
  Here's what you'll leave with.
• 1:16
  Why no study can hand you a number, and what sets yours instead.
• 1:20
  Then where to cut, and how to tell if it's working.
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  First: does the research give you a length to aim for?
• 1:27
  No study can set yours.
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  The two closest ones count different things.
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  In a 2021 paper, Spotify's own researchers looked
• 1:35
  at shows from publishers Spotify owns or operates.
• 1:38
  They left out episodes under ten minutes.
• 1:41
  Episodes that kept more first-time listeners past five minutes tended to be longer.
• 1:45
  That runs contrary to the advice to keep episodes short, they write.
• 1:49
  A 2024 study of one medical teaching podcast points the other way.
• 1:54
  Its episodes ran eight to seventeen minutes.
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  Each extra minute went with fewer listeners still there by the end of the episode.
• 2:01
  So one counts who stays five minutes, and the other who finishes.
• 2:05
  Neither changed a length to see what happened.
• 2:08
  What about the rule that attention drops after ten or fifteen minutes?
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  A 2016 review of the research on lectures found the primary data don't support it.
• 2:18
  Attention varied most with the teacher, not the format.
• 2:22
  That's lectures, not podcasts.
• 2:24
  Still, it takes away one reason given for going short.
• 2:28
  And the advice to fit your episodes to a commute?
• 2:31
  In Edison Research's January 2026 tracking, about six in ten
• 2:36
  American weekly podcast listeners listen most often at home.
• 2:40
  So for most of them, the car isn't the main place they listen.
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  That counts each person's main place, not how long they listen.
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  So when someone hands you a length rule, ask what it counted.
• 2:52
  Who stayed a few minutes?
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  Or who reached the end?
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  Second: if no study gives you the number, what does?
• 3:00
  Length isn't the big decision.
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  I'd start with strategy.
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  In the age of AI, a business makes content for
• 3:07
  people and for the AI that searches for them.
• 3:10
  Both need to understand which subject you're the expert on.
• 3:14
  So that's the first decision, before any format.
• 3:17
  Then comes the material behind it.
• 3:19
  A lot of times, that's research or data you've never had time to share.
• 3:24
  Or it's what the experts on your team know.
• 3:26
  They never get time to pass it on.
• 3:28
  They still won't.
• 3:30
  But a podcast gets it out anyway.
• 3:32
  Want search to find you too?
• 3:34
  Google says it has no preferred word count.
• 3:37
  That's written for web pages.
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  It says nothing about podcasts.
• 3:41
  What it asks for is original information and first-hand expertise.
• 3:46
  Next comes the show type that carries your material.
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  Interviews, or episodes that teach what you know.
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  Then the length really just follows.
• 3:54
  That last link has the most support.
• 3:57
  In 2019 the Reuters Institute at Oxford studied daily
• 4:01
  news podcasts in five countries, and found three formats.
• 4:05
  Micro-bulletins ran one to five minutes,
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  round-ups six to fifteen and deep dives twenty or more.
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  Many publishers picked the format that played to what they already did well.
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  Take true crime documentaries.
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  I think they run long, and that's just the nature of the content.
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  The institute's 2026 report calls documentary-style shows
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  long-form deep dives, with crime among their themes.
• 4:30
  What about business podcasts?
• 4:31
  One production agency counted the top hundred business shows on Apple in 2025.
• 4:37
  Their average episode runs forty-six minutes.
• 4:40
  That's who's at the top, not why they got there.
• 4:43
  The typical business show is shorter.
• 4:45
  One podcast index company's 2026 count puts it at twenty-nine minutes.
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  So look up shows in your format.
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  Start from their range.
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  The hours you have can shape the format too.
• 4:57
  Mignon Fogarty launched the Grammar Girl podcast in 2006.
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  It started at about two minutes an episode.
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  In a 2021 interview she put it at about twelve to seventeen.
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  Why so short?
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  Partly because those were the shows she liked to listen to.
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  And partly because her earlier show had been an interview show with a co-host.
• 5:16
  The production work was more than she could keep doing.
• 5:19
  In the episode on starting a podcast,
• 5:21
  the test was to time one episode before picking a schedule.
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  Length belongs in that same sum.
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  Choosing a format gets its own episode later.
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  Third: inside that range, what decides the final length?
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  The content still has to be worth the listener's time.
• 5:38
  Broadcast coach Valerie Geller's rule is never to air
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  anything unless you can say why someone would listen.
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  I'd run her test on every stretch of an episode.
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  Cut what fails it.
• 5:49
  Hrishikesh Hirway edits his podcast Song Exploder by a clock in his head.
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  It tells him how long something can go on before it feels repetitive.
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  For a song's second verse, he asks what new idea it brings.
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  I'd ask that of every stretch of talk.
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  Where should the cutting start?
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  Anything that gets in the way of listening
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  should be out of the way as fast as possible.
• 6:12
  In the medical teaching podcast, listeners left
• 6:14
  fastest in the first two and a half minutes.
• 6:17
  The authors read that as people realizing the topic wasn't for them.
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  In a 2020 Spotify guide, one host's intro ran about a minute.
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  It lost around ten percent of listeners at the start.
• 6:29
  A later season tried an intro of a few seconds.
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  The early drop was nowhere near as steep.
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  That's one show's chart, and new shows can lose more early anyway.
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  Spotify's 2021 paper also studied each episode's opening ten minutes.
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  Shows that kept more new listeners had less time without speech there.
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  Their descriptions matched those minutes more closely, too.
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  Listeners should know what they're getting into.
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  So say plainly what the episode covers.
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  Then start on it.
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  Last: once episodes are out, how do you know the length works?
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  Compare each one with your own past episodes.
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  As of June 2026, Spotify's dashboard benchmarks
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  an episode against your earlier ones.
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  YouTube lets you compare your ten latest videos of similar length.
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  Why compare with yourself?
• 7:18
  In Spotify's 2020 guide, a show that usually ran
• 7:22
  short put out one episode of about forty minutes.
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  It lost listeners steeply after a few minutes.
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  The guide says longer doesn't necessarily mean lower retention.
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  It offers two guesses.
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  This audience didn't take to the longer format.
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  Or it needed a few more episodes to get used to it.
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  So if you change your length sharply, give it a few episodes before you judge it.
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  Note how much of each recent episode people played.
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  Then set every new one beside those numbers.
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  Not beside someone else's.
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  Expect rough charts if your show is small, though.
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  Apple shows nothing until at least five people
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  have listened in the time frame you pick.
• 8:00
  Reading your numbers gets a deeper look later in the season.
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  I wouldn't overcomplicate it.
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  The length of an episode should follow the kind of content you make.
• 8:09
  Pick the subject you want to own and the material only you have.
• 8:13
  Let that choose the format.
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  Start from the range of shows like yours, then cut what a listener wouldn't miss.
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  And judge each new episode against your own.
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  Your next step is a small test.
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  Play back the first ten minutes of your last episode with a timer running.
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  Mark every stretch where nobody's speaking, and every stretch nobody would miss.
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  That's where your cuts start.
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  No episodes yet?
• 8:36
  Try it on a show in your format.
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  That's the episode.
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  Thanks for listening.
• 8:41
  The written version is on workhacker.com, with every source.
• 8:45
  And if you want a podcast like this for your business, WorkHacker makes them.
• 8:49
  See you next time.