To commemorate Women’s History Month, our insight this week is on podcast listening among U.S. women today, and the women podcast hosts who are making history.
According to The Infinite Dial 2023, 27% of women in the U.S. age 12+ have listened to a podcast in the last week. The list below ranks the Top 10 Podcasts in the U.S. based on the number of women weekly podcast listeners for Q4 2023 from Edison Podcast Metrics.
The podcast with the largest weekly reach of women weekly podcast listeners age 13+ in the U.S. is the true crime podcast Crime Junkiehosted by Ashley Flowers with Brit Prawat, and launched in December of 2017. Crime Junkie consistently ranks at the top of the podcast charts quarter after quarter, and currently sits at the #2 spot among all weekly podcast listeners in the U.S. The Joe Rogan Experience, the top podcast in the U.S. overall, is #2 among U.S. women, and true crime pod Dateline NBC ranks #3.
Edison Podcast Metrics is the only podcast measurement service in the U.S. that can provide the relative size of audiences across all podcasts and podcast networks. This includes networks and shows that have not opted into other industry rankers.
Podcasts with women hosts take five of the top 10 spots, including Crime Junkie, The Daily with Michael Barbaro and Sabrina Tavernise, Call Her Daddy with Alex Cooper, Morbid with Alaina Urquhart and Ash Kelley, and My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark. And Dateline NBC’s 20-year veteran Andrea Canning is part of the team of correspondents on the true crime pod. All of these podcasts also have tremendous reach with the overall podcast audience, as seen in our most recent Top 50 Podcasts in the U.S. for Q4 2023.
The true crime genre accounts for four of the top 10 podcasts among U.S. women, with three of those podcasts having women hosts.
The sports-focused and NFL player-hosted New Heights with Jason and Travis Kelce would seem to be an unusual contender for the women’s top 10 list but is notably attributed to the influence Taylor Swift and the loyalty of her primarily female fanbase of Swifties. Our data shows how the “Taylor Swift effect” caused a massive increase in listeners and a shift to a female demographic. This is a prime example of how women can significantly shape the trajectory of podcasts, even in male-dominated genres like sports.
Women within the podcasting industry have influence not only as creators, but also as active listeners who drive engagement across content categories.
Real-time Election Results
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We hope you will join us for the presentation via livestream, or in person at Podcast Movement Evolutions. Even if you are attending Podcast Movement Evolutions in person, you will want to register for the free Infinite Dial livestream! This ensures you will receive a link to the replay and to the downloadable presentation deck.
