Podcast Audience Continues To Grow

The Podcast Consumer 2017, the latest in Edison’s annual study of the medium, contains all new data on podcast users in America, derived from the Infinite Dial 2017 study (conducted in partnership with Triton Digital) and the latest from Edison’s Share of Ear® research.

This report charts the rise of podcasting over the past decade.

Takeaways include the following:

• Podcasting continues to rise, with Monthly listeners growing from 21% to 24% year over year.
• The audience for podcasts continues to be predominately 18-54, and leans slightly male.
• The Podcast listener remains an affluent, educated consumer— and one that is becoming increasingly more likely to gravitate to ad-free or ad-light subscription experiences.
• Clicking on a podcast to listen to it immediately (either streamed or via progressive download) is the dominant paradigm for listening, though 27% do subscribe to podcasts.
• Subscribers tend to have been podcast consumers for longer than non-subscribers, consume more podcasts, and are more likely to use their smartphone as their primary podcast player.
• While Home continues to be the most often named location for podcast listening, the vehicle is a strong second.
• Most podcast consumers listen to most of the podcast episodes they download, and the vast majority listen to at least most of each episode.
• Podcasts are the number one audio source by time of consumption among podcast listeners.
• On the smartphone, podcasting’s Share of Ear® is tied with AM/FM content, and leads AM/FM among 13-34 year olds.