The Record is Nielsen's quarterly report card on how U.S. consumers spend their listening day, fueled by Nielsen and Edison Research. While advertisers are constantly tracking changes in consumer behavior to improve the impact of their cross-channel marketing, The Record helps cut through with a unique representation of the time spent with ad supported audio.
So how have audio listening habits shifted in the second quarter of 2025 compared to the first? Let’s dig into the data.
The Q2 audio overview
- Daily audio consumption amounted to 3 hours and 50 minutes of daily listening across both ad supported and ad free platforms like radio, podcasts, streaming music services and satellite radio.
- In the second quarter of 2025, ad supported audio accounted for 64% of all listening, while in the TV landscape, 74% of viewing was done on ad supported platforms.
- Zeroing in on the ad supported audio universe, consumers spent 64% of their daily time in the second quarter with radio, 19% with podcasts, 14% with streaming audio services and 3% with satellite radio.
- Radio accounts for anywhere from 45% of daily ad supported audio time among people 18-34 to 71% among 35+. Meanwhile, podcasts skew the other way, representing 15% of daily audio time for people 35 and older compared with 32% among those 18-34.
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| Share of daily time spent with ad supported audio among audiences 25-54 |
Tracking radio listening by format
The following table details how the share of radio audience varies by format, age, demographic and platform for the top 15 largest-reaching AM/FM radio formats.
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| Q2 2025 Radio Formats |
As we continue to see quarter over quarter, audio formats can have powerful reach with audiences of different demographics.