The Record: Nielsen Releases Q2 U.S. Audio Listening Trends

Americans spend almost 20% of every day with audio; in Q2 2024 that translated to 4 hours and 5 minutes of daily1 listening across both ad-supported and ad-free platforms like radio, podcasts, streaming music services and satellite radio. The enduring importance of audio in our media habits was a driver behind the launch of The Record—a quarterly look at how U.S. audiences divide up their time spent listening, powered by Nielsen and Edison Research.

As marketers track the trends impacting their cross-channel media strategies, The Record offers a distinct perspective of the time spent with ad-supported audio channels.

Between April and June of 2024, listeners gave 67% of their daily time with ad-supported audio to radio, 19% to podcasts, 11% to streaming audio services and 3% to satellite radio. Among 18-to-34 year-olds, radio’s share of time increased from 45% in the first quarter to 48% in Q2 while podcasts decreased slightly from 37% to 35%.

Radio, the original ad-supported audio platform, consistently reaches all corners of the population. Among younger consumers, nearly half of all daily ad-supported audio time is spent with radio, while older listeners give almost three-quarters of their time to radio.

These additional tables detail how the share of audience varies by format, age, demographic and platform for the top 15 largest-reaching AM/FM radio formats. These differentiate between the share of all radio listening and the share of streaming listening specifically, which are those listening to the digital streams of radio stations.

Tracking radio listening by format

This chart reveals which radio formats have the highest share of listening and how that differs between total radio (over-the-air and streaming combined) and the radio streaming universe.

As the data demonstrates, audio remains a fixture in American’s daily media habits and stands out as an opportunity for enhancing your cross-media campaigns.

The Record provides a quarterly analysis of audio listening behaviors across the total radio universe. The charts represent average daily usage and share of listening for U.S. audiences.