25% of Latinos in the US are monthly podcast listeners with 45% of US Latinos age 18+ having listened to a podcast at some point. These findings are from a Share of Ear report from Edison Research and show the results of a representative survey of 2500 Hispanic/Latino adults age 18+. conducted in May 2020.
Although US Latinos (61%) overall are less likely to be familiar with the term ‘podcasting’ than the total US population (75%), there are hardly any Spanish-language dominant Latinos in the US who aren’t familiar with the term podcasting and aren’t already listening.
The study shows that 36% of US Latinos have listened to a podcast in English and 24% of US Latinos have listened to a podcast in Spanish. Language dominance, in general, does not seem to correlate with the likelihood to be a monthly or weekly listener to podcasts, though: 25% of all US Latinos in non-Spanish–language dominant households have listened to a podcast in the last month compared to 26% of those in Spanish-language dominant households. Also, 20% of all US Latinos in non-Spanish–language dominant households have listened to a podcast in the last week, which is the same number (20%) as those in Spanish-language dominant households.
Among podcast listeners, however, there are some differences based on language dominance. Notably, podcast listeners in Spanish-language dominant households are much more likely to have begun listening to podcasts recently than those in non-Spanish-language dominant households. 70% of Spanish-language dominant listeners have started listening in the last year, compared with 47% of non-Spanish-language dominant listeners. Of all US Latino podcast listeners, 52% are listening to podcasts more since the COVID-19 pandemic. Of US Latino monthly podcast listeners, 55% are male, 50% are 18-34, and 47% identify as the first generation in the United States.
Gabriel Soto, Manager of Research at Edison Research, said “Today we learned that the majority of Latinos have only started listening to podcasts within the last year, and yet many are still unfamiliar with the term podcasting. Latinos have been and will continue to be essential for the sustained growth of podcast listening.”
Other key findings
- 80% say they are listening to podcasts more now than compared to one year ago
- 26% say they source they use most for podcast discovery is social media posts, followed by recommendations from friends and family at 22%
- 73% listened to an English podcast in the last month and 49% listened to a Spanish podcast in the last month
- 47% agree it is ‘somewhat important’ or ‘very important’ that the podcasts they listen to include stories about and perspectives from their countries of origin
The Latino Podcast Listener Report in English may be downloaded at www.edisonresearch.com/latino-podcast-listener-report and in Spanish at http://www.edisonresearch.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/U.S-Latino-Podcast-Listeners-Report-Edison-Research-Spanish.pdf.
