Worries about podcast listening levelling off have been laid to rest by the 2023 Infinite Dial study. After taking a small but surprising downturn last year, monthly and weekly podcast listening bounced back this year. “After a one-year pause, podcasting’s numbers are up across the board,” Edison VP of Research Megan Lazovick said during a Thursday webinar.
Podcast increased its monthly reach to 42% of Americans aged 12 after declining to 38% last year. That put its penetration slightly above 2021 levels, before the unexpected 2022 decline.
In 2023, the overwhelming majority of Americans (83%) know what a podcast is – about 237 million people. The growth of the medium can also be traced by looking at how many people have tested it. After slow growth from 2006-2014, “Serial” came along creating a major buzz and opening the medium to a wider audience. Apple made its podcast player available as a standard part of iOS and the floodgates opened on new shows. In 2023, a strong majority (64%) said they've ever listened to a podcast, an estimated 183 million people.
The bounce back in podcast listening can be seen by breaking down the audience by demos. Monthly podcast listeners aged 12-34 jumped to 55% this year, back to where it was two years ago before the 2022 decline. But the largest and most consistent growth has occurred among 35–54-year-olds. This demo has now passed the halfway point with 51% reporting being a monthly listener. That’s an eight-point increase in the last year.
The podcast portrait is less rosy when looking at Americans 55 and older. Monthly listening for this demo peaked at 26% in 2021, and has fallen ever since, declining to 21% in 2023. “There is certainly great content out there for this generation,” Lazovick said. The question is how do we get them to listen?”
The good news for the podcast industry is that weekly podcast listening numbers rose sharply in 2023 to 31% of the 12+ population. That means almost one third of the country are now weekly podcast consumers or an estimated 89 million people.
Simply put, more people are listening to podcasts – and more of them. Weekly podcast listeners consumed an average of nine podcast episodes in the last week, up from eight episodes in 2022.
And more people are listening to podcasts in-car. Nearly four in ten U.S. adults age 18+ (38%) who have ridden in a car in the last month say they listen to podcasts in the car, up from 32% in 2022. However, podcast listening is still stagnant among those 55+ with 14% telling Edison’s researchers they listened to a podcast in the last week, flat from 2022.
The Infinite Dial 2023 was conducted via a national telephone survey of 1,500 people aged 12+ using random digit dialing techniques to cell phones and landlines. The survey was offered in English and Spanish with data weighted to national 12+ U.S. population figures.