Though its overall share declined from last quarter, Nielsen’s quarterly report on American listening habits still shows a sizable gap between the daily consumption of radio and podcasts.
Overall consumer daily audio listening, according to the data, is down 15 minutes from this time last year.
The new audio listening data is comprised of findings from both Edison Research and Nielsen and is for the second quarter of 2025. You can read much of the report’s trends here.
Below, we summarize and compare findings with the first quarter.
Numbers in line with the first quarter
The study found that 64% of consumers spent daily time with ad-supported radio stations. That’s down a bit from the 66% of consumers reported listening to radio daily last quarter. The second quarter of 2024 registered 67% of consumers with daily radio time.
Podcasts had 19% of surveyed listenership this quarter, followed by ad-supported streaming audio.
Among those aged 18—34, radio accounted for 45% of daily ad-supported audio time, compared with 47% in the first quarter, while podcasts were second with 32%. For those 35 and over, radio captured 71% of their listening time, compared to just 15% with podcasts. Those numbers were 73% and 15%, respectively, in the first quarter of the year.
In total, daily audio consumption averaged 3 hours and 50 minutes across both ad-supported and ad-free platforms such as radio, podcasts, streaming music services and satellite radio, according to the study. That’s down a decent margin from Q2 2024, which showed 4 hours and 5 minutes of daily audio listening.
News/Talk leads radio format PPM data
The quarterly report also noted that the radio format with the highest audience share is News/Talk, with approximately 11%. That’s followed by Adult Contemporary, Country and Classic Hits.
The data for ad-supported audio comes from Edison’s “Share of Ear” research. Nielsen PPM data, meanwhile, breaks down the share of total audience for radio formats, both over-the-air and streaming. Nielsen originally released this study in the first quarter last year.
Despite the modest declines, Nielsen’s overall takeaway is that the medium is strong, but “undervalued.” Audio formats in general, Nielsen said, continue to reach a wide variety of different demographics.
Nielsen added that its global annual marketing survey and global compass benchmarks each show radio having the second-highest ROI globally, behind only social media.
