It’s clear from two recent reports that podcast listeners love audio and want to hear more.
That’s the consensus from the new Westwood One 2021 Audioscape report, which looked at podcast consumer trends using data from Q3 2020 Share of Ear report by Edison Research.
While AM/FM radio continues to dominate much of the audio landscape, podcasting is one area that continues to see significant growth. According to the Audioscape survey, podcast listeners are dedicated audiophiles. On a typical day podcast listeners spend 41% more time listening to audio during the day as compared to the average U.S. consumer, which spends a little more than three and a half hours with all forms of audio on a daily basis.
[Read: Share of Listening to Podcasting Hits All-Time High]
When people listen to podcasts, they remain a devoted bunch, the Westwood One report said. Among those that listen to the podcast format, podcasting becomes the listener’s number one platform. Once people become regular podcasts customers, nearly one-third of their daily total spent with audio is devoted to podcasts.
The surveys also found that the podcast audience is significantly younger than the listeners of other media. The median age of the podcast audience is 34. According to the Westwood One survey, the current median age of podcast listeners is 13 years younger than AM/FM radio and two decades younger than broadcast television network audiences.
The Edison survey also found that most podcast listening occurs at home throughout the day, with a 60% share as compared to podcast listening in the car (21%), at work (15%) or at some other locale (4%).
The Edison Research report also looked at how much time is spent with four audio content types: music, sports, news and talk/personality. The Edison survey found that podcast listeners are twice as likely to listen to news and three times as likely to listen to personalities and sports formats when compared to nonpodcast consumers. “It is not surprising to see podcasting’s share of time spent soaring over time among those who use spoken word formats such as talk/personality, news, and sports,” wrote Brittany Faison, the insights manager at Cumulus Media/Westwood One in a blog about the two surveys.
