DAVID BENITO
- Listening to audiobooks and podcasts at 1.2x speed is ideal.
- It's not so fast you lose track — and you can finish a 10-hour book in 8 hours and 20 minutes
- Spotify provided data showing that 98.5% of people never change the podcast speed. Tragic!
How we actually engage with technology in our lives is often intensely personal.
I don't mean personal in the "23 and Me hackers stole your DNA info" way. I mean that there are a thousand tiny decisions and choices we make every day: Which apps will go on our phone's home screen? Will you store your photos on iCloud or Google Photos? Will you accept these cookies?
I rarely cast judgment on others' choices in how they use technology. I don't yuck a yum. But there is one area where I know there is simply a superior way to do something.
And that thing is listening to podcasts or audiobooks at 1.2x speed.
It's just slightly faster than normal at 1.2x — almost imperceptible, yet zippier. If you go too fast, the voices get distorted, which can be hard to follow.
Even at 1.5x, I find myself struggling to keep up — at that speed, it requires really active listening. Usually, I'm listening to a podcast or audiobook while doing something else — driving, exercising, cleaning — and if it goes too fast, my mind loses track.
And 2x? OK, slow down there, buddy. I'm a human.
But tragically, it seems that the world hasn't yet all figured out the joys of 1.2x, which allows you to listen to a 10-hour audiobook in just 8 hours and 20 minutes.
Spotify provided exclusive data to Business Insider on listening speeds for podcasts for November 2023. A whopping 98.5% of listeners never changed the speed — they stuck at 1.0x.
The next most popular speed was 1.2x — but only 2% of people actually listened at this speed. And only 0.1% of listeners dared to go 2x.
Over on Amazon's Audible, it was a similar story. While Audible declined to give Business Insider the percentages for how many people listened to Audible books at each speed, according to the data it did share, plain old 1.0x was the most common speed, followed by 1.2x, then 1.5x, 1.7x, 2.0x, and in last place, 0.7x.
Once you've entered the world of 1.2x speed, you'll never go back to listening at simply the normal speed. It's just a little quicker and livelier. And yes, it's nice to get through it slightly faster.
Of course, 1.2x is not for absolutely everyone. If you're listening to something that's not your first language or have auditory processing issues, 1x or even lower may be preferable.
But if you've been listening at regular speed, give it a try.
Correction: January 5, 2024 — An earlier version of this story misstated the time it would take to listen to a 10-hour audiobook when playback is set to 1.2x speed: That time is 8 hours and 20 minutes.