Roughly 4 in 10 (40.3% of) American adults listened to podcasts on a monthly basis last year, up from 35.9% a couple of years earlier, reflecting the continued growing popularity of this medium, according to a recent report from Triton Digital. However, as the podcast audience has grown, its audience demographics have remained largely unchanged.
That’s to say, podcast listeners “are younger, more educated, and more diverse” than the general population. In this latest report, 25-34-year-olds were the age group most apt to tune in, garnering a 52% higher share of the monthly adult podcast listening audience than its share of the US general adult population. That compares with last year’s report, in which they also were the most prominent listeners, with an index score of 150. Consistent with last year’s results, this latest research indicates that the next-highest indexing age group is the 35-44 bracket (141, compared to 143 last year), followed by the 18-24 group (121, compared to 125 last year).
(This year’s report uses data from Q4 2021 through Q3 2023, whereas last year’s report used data from Q4 2021 through Q3 2022).
It’s true that the index figures for the 18-24 and 35-44 brackets are down slightly from last year’s report, which could indicate that older adults are tuning in a little more. In fact, separate results from the research indicate that the 55+ age group has experienced the biggest increase in listeners over the past 2 years, followed by 35-54-year-olds and then 18-34-year-olds.
Research from MarketingCharts also finds the oldest adults to be moving slightly closer to the average in terms of weekly podcast listening, though they continue to trail younger adults in listening by a sizable degree.
Meanwhile, although podcast listening is growing faster among women than men, the latter are more heavily represented among podcast listeners (index of 113 versus their population share, versus 115 last year).
Podcast listening is also higher than average (in terms of audience share versus population share) among college graduates (index of 130, compared to 131 last year) and adults with household income of at least $100K (index of 128, up from 121 last year). This medium does attract a diverse audience, as evidenced by the 118 index score for Hispanic adults (115 last year) and 110 index score for Black/African American adults (109 last year).
News was again the most downloaded genre in the US in 2023, at 22% share of downloads, per the report. News was followed by True Crime (18% share), Comedy (15% share), and Society & Culture (10% share).
Looking at the top-indexing demographics among some of those leading genres, Triton Digital shows that:
- News appeals to adults ages 55+ (index of 166) and post-graduates+ (index of 131);
- True Crime draws an audience of females ages 25-34 (index of 171) and mothers (index of 163);
- Comedy appeals to adults ages 18-24 (index of 154) and students (index of 141); and
- Sports pulls in males ages 35-54 (index of 170) and those with household income of at least $100k (index of 120).
Finally, YouTube seems to be emerging as a force in podcast listening. Monthly podcast listeners are more likely to say they use YouTube than Spotify or Apple Podcasts most often to listen to podcasts. YouTube listeners are more likely to lean male, older, and with lower household incomes, while Spotify listeners skew more male, and Apple listeners more female with a higher household income. Unlike Apple Podcast listeners, a plurality of whom have listened for 4+ years, the largest share of YouTube listeners have only started listening in the past year.
For more, download the report here.
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