The Increasing Ethnic Diversity Of Podcast Listeners

We have been tracking the demographics of the Podcast listener for over a decade now, and there have been significant changes over that time. In the early days of the medium, Podcasting was disproportionally a medium for white males, ages 25-44. Much of that “skew” was down to the available content options, but today, the content universe for Podcasts has exploded, and the diversity of programming available rivals any other form of audio.

As a result, the racial/ethnic diversity of the Podcast audience has increased, and today, the Podcast universe is every bit as diverse as America–and perhaps even more so, in some interesting ways.

Here is a comparison of the ethic composition of Podcast listeners from 2011 and 2016:

Two things stand out here. First of all, the Podcast audience is growing increasingly non-white, with white listeners shrinking from 68% in 2011 to 63% in 2016. Also, the percentage of African-American listeners has not only grown, but also over-indexes from the U.S. Population, which is currently around 12% African-American. Again, much of this is due to the increasing diversity of content available.

The early promise of Podcasting was the “democratization of broadcasting,” giving everyone who wanted to be heard, a voice. Clearly, that promise is coming true.