The Catholic Academy reached more than 28,000 users last year with its podcasts from the Haus am Dom. The digital trend continues - and the number of personal visits to the building has also increased.
The Catholic Academy's podcasts at Haus am Dom were more popular than ever in 2023. According to the latest statistics, demand on Spotify, iTunes, Amazon Music and Deezer grew strongly last year, with the podcasts reaching 12,500 more users than in the previous year. In total, the audios on the free and freely accessible "Haus am Dom" channel were clicked on 28,314 times (15,806 views in 2022). "We are particularly pleased that we are reaching many young people in this way, because we know that they particularly enjoy using podcasts," says Prof. Dr. Joachim Valentin, Director of Haus am Dom and the Catholic Academy.
48 new episodes went online in 2023, and 181 episodes are currently available in the media library. The most frequently clicked episodes from 2023 were "Gert Scobel und Thomas Schmidt: Aufbruch zu den aufklärenden Rändern" (431 clicks) and "Deutsch - Eine Liebeserklärung" (344 clicks). Two to four new episodes go online every month, mostly thematically based on the six-month program, which is currently running under the title "Orientations". According to a recent Statista survey, more than a third of Spotify users are between 20 and 29 years old.
A real click magnet
Both the podcasts and the company's YouTube channel (www.youtube.com/hausamdom) benefit from the significant improvement in sound and video technology at events since 2020. In 2023, 144,707 users tuned into live streams on YouTube or clicked on one of the more than 575 videos in the Catholic Academy's media library. This did not break last year's click record, in which the Academy went viral with a video and reached 222,352 people digitally. But: "The decisive factor for us is that we had 30,000 more views in 2023 than in the more comparable year 2021, even though only half as many events were streamed for financial reasons," says Prof. Valentin. In 2022, the video of an event at Haus am Dom with taz journalist Ulrike Hermann went through the roof and has since been clicked on around 130,000 times. Hermann also proved to be a click magnet once again in 2023, with the talk "Das Ende des Kapitalismus - Es braucht grünes Schrumpfen" from November 21 achieving 21,196 views in just three months. The two most-clicked videos from the media library in 2023 were the 2020 streamed event "Rudolf Steiner, Waldorf education and Weleda - Where does anthroposophy stand today?" (5143 clicks) and the event broadcast in 2019 "Spiritual abuse in the Catholic Church - a conversation with Dr. Doris Wagner" (2019 clicks). The Haus am Dom channel currently has 3370 subscribers.
Haus highly frequented
The Haus am Dom welcomed 52.959 visitors attended Academy events and external conferences (previous year: 37,207, best year before Corona 2019: 89,700). This large jump can be explained by the fact that significantly more events took place at the Academy in 2023 than in the previous year. The building's rooms were used a total of 1,232 times, including 362 times by the Rabanus Maurus Catholic Academy (previous year: 306), 344 times by the Diocese of Limburg and tenants of the building (previous year: 320) and 511 times by external customers (previous year: 462). This is a significant increase compared to the previous year (1,107). "The latest statistics show us that the after-effects of the coronavirus pandemic are now over once and for all - and that our usage figures are back to pre-pandemic levels," says Managing Director Andrea Hörner. Public events such as the Night of the Museums, in which the Haus am Dom will participate again in 2024, also attract many people to the museum who have not yet come into contact with the offer. New, upholstered chairs were recently purchased for the Great Hall to make guests even more likely to come to the conference and event venue in the heart of Frankfurt's new Old Town in future.
In total, 223,593 people took part in internal and external events at Haus am Dom in 2023 (in person and digitally). The majority of visitors came to readings, discussions, talks and cultural events at the Rabanus Maurus Catholic Academy, which, with 196,471 participants, reached significantly more people (in person and digitally) than in 2021 (145,117). "Apart from the outlier year 2022, in which the Ulrike Herrmann video gave us a huge reach, our academy has seen steady organic growth since 2018," says Prof. Valentin.
The Catholic Academy on the web
Up-to-date information on the program of the Catholic Academy in Haus am Dom can be found at www.hausamdom-frankfurt.de and on the Facebook channel www.facebook.com/hausamdom.frankfurt. Current events and insights into daily Academy life can be found at www.instagram.com/hausamdom. If an event is streamed live, the video can be found at www.youtube.com/hausamdom, where there is also an extensive media library available. The podcast channel "Haus am Dom" is free of charge and freely accessible on Spotify, iTunes, Amazon Music und Deezer.
