The number of monthly podcast listeners grew 16 percent year-over-year to 100 million (104 million) consumers for the first time in 2020, according to Edison Research and Triton Digital’s annual study, “The Infinite Dial 2020.”
Seventy-five percent of Americans aged 12 and older (about 212 million people) are now familiar with podcasting, up from 70 percent in 2019. Fifty-five percent (155 million) listen to podcasts in general while 37 percent (104 million people) listen to podcasts monthly, up from 32 percent (90 million) in 2019.
It’s more important than ever that brands create content easily retrievable through voice as consumption of both podcasts and voice-operated assistants rise. Over six in ten Americans use some form of voice assistant technology and nearly one-third of smart speaker owners have three or more devices in their homes.
Other noteworthy survey findings include smartphone ownership growing to 240 million, smart speaker awareness growing to about 220 million and smart speaker ownership growing to 76 million. The mean number of smart speakers per household grew from 1.7 in 2018 to 2.2 in 2020. As smart speaker ownership increased, radio ownership decreased, as the mean number of radios per household went from three in 2008 to 1.5 in 2020.
Consumer habits related to smartphones, tablets and smartwatches have shown no new growth, indicating that in-car audio has the most potential for digital audio growth. In fact, 45 percent of Americans aged 12 and older have listened to audio in a car through a cell phone.
Findings are based on a national telephone survey Edison Research conducted from January-February 2020 among 1,502 people aged 12 and older.
