Podcast listening in US grew 20% in 2022 with the weekly listening average increasing from 2.7 hours in 2021 to 3.8 hours in 2022 according to Triton Digital. Triton Digital’s U.S. Year-End Podcast Report provides key insights into the growing US podcast landscape over the course of 2022.
Key findings from the U.S. Year-End Podcast Report
- Podcast listening continues to grow, with a 20% increase in downloads in 2022. The average listener downloaded more than one hour more of content per week in 2022, in comparison to the prior year.
- Both Apple Podcasts and Spotify are leaders in where podcasts are consumed. Spotify has more listeners, but Apple has more total downloads and downloads per listener.
- Mobile remains the key podcast listening device. Smart speaker podcast listening has declined, returning to pre-Covid levels.
- News, Comedy, and True Crime remain the largest podcast genres.
- Significant consumption of back catalogue episodes exists, although varying by genre.
Amongst the facts contained in the report, it now takes an average weekly download of 490K to make the top 51-100 position in the Podcast Top 100 chart and over 3 million downloads to get into the top 25. On average there were 226 million podcast downloads in the US with NPR News Now being the number 1 most downloaded podcast of the year.
Rachel Maddow Presents: Ultra was the top performing debut podcast of the year, launching in October with the highest number of downloads and listeners during a debut month.
The report found that monthly podcast listeners are younger than the general population and are more likely to be male. They also tend to be more affluent, better educated and more diverse with 15% more Hispanic and 9% more Black/African American listeners than the general population.
The complete 27-page report which is free can be obtained from Triton Digital here.
