A study conducted in early 2025 revealed that ** percent of U.S. adults had either listened to or watched a podcast during the week leading up to the survey. This figure has been gradually growing since 2013. The surge compared to the previous year, when the share stood at ** percent, can also be due to the fact that the survey considered both audio and video podcast consumption for the first time in 2025.

Introduction

Podcast Statistics: Podcasts have become a significant medium for information and entertainment, revolutionizing content consumption globally. In 2024, the global podcast market reached USD 30.03 billion.

A podcast is an audio program available on the internet, typically released in episodes, allowing users to download and listen on demand, enhancing accessibility. In the United States, 67% of individuals aged 12 and older have listened to a podcast, with 47% engaging monthly and 34% weekly. Globally, podcast listenership is projected to reach 504.9 million by 2024, indicating a steady upward trend.

Demographically, 59% of U.S. individuals aged 12-34 are monthly podcast listeners, followed by 55% aged 35-54, and 27% aged 55 and above. The medium's appeal is further evidenced by 46% of weekly podcast listeners reporting product or service purchases based on podcast advertisements. Additionally, 23% of weekly listeners spend 10 hours or more engaging with podcasts each week. These statistics underscore podcasts' expansive reach and influential role in modern media consumption.​

In 2024, a survey on podcast consumption revealed that ** percent of U.S. adults had either listened to or watched a podcast within the last month, a figure which has more than tripled over the past decade. Weekly podcast consumption has also sharply increased, and some of the world’s leading podcast publishers achieve millions of unique streams and downloads per month. Podcast consumption in the U.S. Once a niche format, podcasts have now become part of the mainstream media landscape. Between 2011 and 2025, the share of Americans who had ever consumed a podcast almost tripled, growing from ** to ** percent. As podcasts have grown in popularity, so has the variety of content available in the format. Some of the more popular podcast genres are music and comedy, but tens of millions of U.S. households have fans of sports, science, news and arts podcasts too. Podcasts are often also used as part of marketing strategies or to generate engagement between bloggers, news publications, or even different departments within a company. Like most forms of modern media, podcasts frequently include ads, and podcast ad revenue reached over *** billion U.S. dollars in the United States in 2023. By 2024, it is expected that advertising revenue in this sector will grow by around *** million each year and will exceed *** billion U.S. dollars in 2026. For U.S. consumers, podcasts are not just a source of inspiration or a way to escape from daily life but also an opportunity to educate themselves. In a survey held in early 2019, the majority of respondents said that their main reason for listening to podcasts was to learn new things. There are podcasts on philosophy, history, travel, and business, as well as much more including content aimed solely at educating children.

According to a study from 2025, podcast consumption in the United States was still growing, whether it concerned overall, monthly or weekly consumption. A total of ** percent of respondents stated that they had listened to or watched podcasts in the past, while ** percent said they had done so within the past month in 2025. At the same time, weekly podcast listening has grown to ** percent among the surveyed respondents. 2025 was the first year, when the survey combined both audio and video podcast consumption.

The number of monthly podcast consumers in the United States has been growing steadily. According to estimates, around *** million people consumed podcasts of any format in the month prior to the survey. This marked an increase of around ** million Americans. For the first time, these estimates included both audio and video podcasts, compared to previous years, when the data only covered audio consumption.

A survey conducted in the United States in 2023 revealed that younger generations are more likely to be daily or weekly podcast listeners. On top of that, ** percent of millennials stated to listen to podcasts daily. Only ** percent of the baby boomer generation stated the same. A similar picture drew itself concerning weekly listenership, with millennials being the leading podcast listening generation.

A study of core radio listeners in the U.S. and Canada in 2021 found that approximately 43 percent of Gen Z respondents consumed podcasts weekly or more. Another 48 percent of surveyed Millennials were weekly podcast consumers. Contrarily, only 23 and 17 percent of Boomers and the Greatest Generation (born around the second world war, or before), respectively, listened to podcasts at least weekly.

As video podcasts have grown more and more popular, YouTube equally has grown in popularity among weekly podcast consumers in the United States between 2019 and 2024. While Spotify and Apple Podcasts were the more popular choices from 2019 to 2021, YouTube managed to take the lead in the years after. Based on the most recent figures from April 2024, ** percent of weekly podcast consumers use YouTube, whereas Spotify attracted ** percent of weekly consumers.

The statistic shows the leading sources used for discovering new podcasts among weekly podcast listeners in the United States as of *********. The data reveals that ** percent of responding U.S. podcast listeners found new podcasts via social media, whereas ** percent did so from listening to podcasts.

According to a study on podcast listening in the United States in 2024, 79 percent of weekly podcast listeners stated to have consumed video podcasts. While 72 percent of the respondents indicated to watch video podcasts actively, 62 percent also stated to let the video content play in the background while they were listening to the audio.

According to a survey held in early 2025 in the United States, ** percent of respondents aged 12 to 34 years old had listened to a podcast within the preceding month, compared to ** percent of those aged 55 or above. Adults in the latter age category have been increasing their podcast listening consistently for years, to a point where respondents aged 35-54 almost caught up on the younger age category. Podcasts are gaining popularity This increased monthly podcast consumption shows the growing prevalence of the format in the United States. A survey on podcast consumption found that in 2012 only ** percent of U.S. respondents had ever listened to an audio podcast, but this figure increased annually and reached ** percent in 2025, by then also including video podcast consumption. Although this rise in popularity is significant, it might also reflect the generational gap in podcast consumption, with younger consumers tuning in more regularly than their older counterparts. In 2021, the share of Millennial podcast consumers in Canada and the U.S. amounted to ** percent, with Boomers only making up ** percent. Video podcasts The recently rising popularity of video podcasts also led to changes in platform usage among podcast consumers. YouTube has taken over the lead from Spotify as the main platform used to access podcasts in the United States as of April 2024, when the streaming platform attracted ** percent of podcast consumers, compared to ** percent for the Swedish competitor. YouTube's newly achieved competitive position in podcasting becomes even more obvious, when considering that almost two in three weekly podcast consumers associated the platform the most with watching and listening to podcasts. Only ** percent said the same about Spotify.

According to data gathered throughout 2024, iHeart Audience Network was by far the most popular podcast network in the United States in terms of weekly downloads. Listeners downloaded the network's podcasts 67 million times on average per week. By comparison, the SiriusXM Podcast Network in second position only registered a weekly average of more than 40 million downloads.

This statistic shows the the average time spent listening to podcasts by weekly podcast users in the United States as of February 2018. According to the source, 17 percent of podcast listeners in the United States listened to 10 hours or more of podcasts in an average week in the measured period.

During a survey conducted among weekly podcast listeners in the United States and released in May 2023, ** percent of Gen Y respondents said podcasters had often influenced them to change their mind on something they once believed in, while ** percent said the same regarding social media influencers. Compared to Millennials, ** percent of responding adult Gen Zers were influenced by podcasters, while the share of those influenced by social media creators added up to ** percent.

North American Spotify users spend the most time on the platform steaming an average of 140 minutes of content on the Spotify app daily.

In March 2025, iHeart Audience Network had **** million audience members in the United States. A ranking of the unique monthly audience of the most popular podcast publishers showed that National Public Radio came third with just over **** million. iHeartPodcasts outperformed NPR in that respect, reaching a monthly audience of ***** million. Podcast streaming market While publishers play an important role in the creation of podcasts, streaming services providing a platform for podcast consumption also benefit from the rising popularity of the format. In 2022, the preferred podcasts providers were YouTube, followed by Spotify, Apple Podcast, Pandora and iHeartRadio, exceeding the popularity of Sirius XM and Stitcher. Considering the revenue generated by streaming services through podcast streaming in 2019, Spotify is the clear market leader with a revenue of *** billion U.S. dollars, followed by Stitcher and Wondery. Streaming services have realized the potential of podcasts, which is why they have started to invest in podcast creating and podcast streaming companies. In 2020, Spotify acquired The Ringer while competitor Sirius XM, after having purchased Pandora, obtained the successful podcast streaming service Stitcher. So far, these acquisitions seem to have proven successful, since Spotify is estimated to overtake Apple Podcast in terms of monthly podcast listeners in 2021. Popular podcast content In terms of content, the most popular genres within the podcast market in the U.S. are comedy followed by news and true crime. The podcasts with the highest revenue worldwide in 2019 were The Joe Rogan Experience, a Spotify-exclusive podcast hosted by the American comedian of the same name in which he talks to a wide array of guests, and My Favorite Murder, a bi-weekly true crime comedy podcast hosted by the American comedians Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark in which they discuss true crime cases. While podcasts were already on the rise over the last few years, there has been an upsurge in podcast consumption during the last year due to the coronavirus pandemic, which meant a higher demand in audio, or entertainment in general, content.

As of January 2025, Spotify has over 640 million monthly active users. Here is the full breakdown of Spotify users by year since 2015:

According to data from February 2022, **** million people in the United States were said to listen to podcasts on Spotify that year, while Apple had **** million podcast listeners. Spotify's and Apple's figures were projected to add up to **** million and **** million by 2025, respectively.

Here are the full list of the 10 most popular artists on Spotify and how many total song streams they have.

Paying subscribers account for about half of Spotify’s monthly active users. This is the number of paying subscribers by year that Spotify has had since 2015.