associated with Stitcher shows like “WTF with Marc Maron,” “Sklarbro Country” and “Freakonomics Radio” are roughly doubling every year. She likened the excitement surrounding, say, a newly launched mug from “The Office Ladies,” a podcast about the bygone sitcom, to the frenetic hype around the release of Air Jordan sneakers. Hundreds of coffee cups can sell out in hours.
This fervent merchandise market has no parallel in traditional media. Newspapers and periodicals still sweeten subscription deals with giveaways—many of us have New Yorker tote bags languishing in our closets, or own that “ESPN the Magazine” fleece that was advertised heavily on TV during the aughts. But podcast merchandise operates as a standalone phenomenon that sees listeners plop down $30 just for a T-shirt or $60 for a hoodie. As Ms.
In this sense, the closest cousin to podcast merch is band T-shirts. Dita Cordelia, 24, a freelance video producer and dedicated podcast listener in Los Angeles, likened hershirt—denoting her devotion to a weekly podcast on screenwriting—to the Morrissey T-shirt she wore in high school. In both instances, she said, the shirts emit an insider message of “Oh you don’t know about this...you have to listen to this.
And like concert T-shirts, podcast gear lets listeners back their favorite sources of entertainment. “It’s supporting something I’m into,” said Corey Long, 40, a contract coordinator at an Atlanta university, who recently purchased a shirt from upstart podcast “,” hosted by two elder millennial bros. Mr. Long concedes that, unlike buying concert shirts while surrounded by a swarm of fellow fans, purchasing podcast merch isn’t a “shared experience.” You’re at home alone, listening in isolation.