Many readers of this newsletter will be familiar with The Infinite Dial™ from Edison Research and generously sponsored by Amazon Music, Wondery, and ART19, which tracks the portion of people who engage in various activities. In the case of podcasting, we show that the percentage of Americans age 12 and older who listen to podcasts each week has grown from 8% in 2014 to 31% today, just shy of a four-fold increase. The Infinite Dial measures people.
In parallel, Edison Research tracks time spent with all forms of audio in our Share of Ear® report. In Share of Ear, respondents keep a detailed one-day audio usage diary, reporting what they listen to and how long they listen.
As such, we can also track the change in time spent with different kinds of audio. One of the biggest changes we have seen over that same number of years is time spent with podcasts.
As the graph below shows, in 2014, Americans age 13 and older spent an average of 5.6 minutes per day listening to podcasting. Today, that number is 25.5 minutes – in this case an increase of more than 4 ½ times the previous level.
When we look a little more closely, a fascinating detail emerges. These averages are considerably affected by how many people tell us they listened to any podcasts at all on their diary day. Among the much smaller group that was listening in 2014 – they were listening a lot – 104.1 minutes per day. A small, passionate group giving a lot of time to this developing platform.
Our current estimate? Among today’s much larger group of daily podcasting listeners – the average is nearly identical. Currently, podcast listeners report listening 104.9 minutes per day. Way more people, same level of passion.
