Podcast listening in Australia is driven by 35-54 year olds with 31% of this group having listened to a podcast in the last month according to The Infinite Dial Australia 2020 from Edison Research. The report summarises a survey of a representative sample of Australians aged 12+ conducted in the first quarter of 2020 before the COVID-19 pandemic.
The latest findings revealed a steady and continued growth in podcasting awareness and usage which shows that 87% of Australians reported being familiar with the term ‘podcasting’, up from 83% in 2019. When broken out by age group, we see that nearly all of those age 12-54 are aware of podcasts (92%).
Overall, one-quarter of Australians have listened to a podcast in the last month, with 35-54 year-olds reporting marginally higher monthly listening than their younger counterparts (31% to 28%, respectively). Monthly listening is half as large, however, among those age 55 and older, with only 14% of this age group saying they listened to a podcast in the last month.
Australians age 35-54 are also the most likely to be weekly podcast listeners, with 22% saying they listened to a podcast in the last week. This compares to the 18% of those age 12-34 and is nearly three times higher than the 8% of those age 55 and older who listened in the last week.
The report concludes that unlike other media, podcast consumption is not being led by the youngest Australians. Instead, it’s the 35-54 year-olds who are driving the monthly and weekly listening. This is likely due to higher listening of AM/FM/DAB+ radio among this age group, coupled with a perception that podcasts are simply previously-aired radio programs available on-demand. But now that Spotify has become a hotspot for podcasts, there is an expectation that there will be an increase in podcast listening among 12-34 year-olds which is Spotify’s core audience.
The second takeaway is that there is still plenty of room for growth among those age 55 and older. Despite the lower monthly and weekly podcast listening, the majority of those age 55 and older are already aware of the medium and so there is scope for an increase of listening in this age group.
