Digital 2025: podcasts gaining popularity
Podcasts received renewed interest after the US presidential election at the end of 2024, when Donald Trump acknowledged the power of podcast hosts like Joe Rogan in his election victory speech.
But more broadly, data from GWI indicates that podcasts have been gaining popularity over the past two years, and more than 1 in 5 online adults (22.1 percent) now listen to at least one podcast each week.
That figure may seem relatively low, but it’s interesting to note that it’s actually higher than the incidence of people following influencers and other experts on social channels (22.0 percent).
Put more simply, it seems that podcasts are now more popular than influencers.
GWI’s data shows that podcasts are relatively more popular in the United States, with 27.7 percent of online adults saying that they listened to a podcast in the past seven days.
However, Indonesians are the world’s most avid podcast fans, with 42.6 percent of the country’s adult internet users saying that they’ve listened to a podcast within the past week.
And the audio format is also highly popular in Mexico, where 41.8 percent of connected adults tune into a podcast at least once a week.
Podcasts are significantly less popular across Asia though, reaching fewer than 1 in 20 connected adults in Japan (4.9 percent), and barely 1 in 8 in China (12.8 percent).
However, while the media has observed that Trump enjoyed particular success in using podcasts to reach younger, “disaffected” men, GWI’s data suggests that women actually make up the majority of podcast listeners.
At a worldwide level, female internet users aged 25 to 34 account for the largest single share of podcast listeners, with women aged 16 to 24 coming a close second.
Podcast time
Meanwhile, the average amount of time spent listening to podcasts has gone through something of a U-shaped curve over the past 18 months
GWI reports that the typical internet user now spends roughly 52 minutes per day listening to podcasts, which is 3 minutes per day less than the value GWI reported in Q1 2023, but 4 minutes more than the value for Q4 2023.
And while women aged 25 to 34 represent the largest single audience of podcasts, it’s actually men in this age group who spend the greatest amount of time listening to this audio format.
Indeed, men aged 25 to 34 say that they spend an average of 1 hour and 7 minutes listening to podcasts each day, compared with 1 hour and 3 minutes per day for their female peers.
The time spent listening to podcasts tends to decline with age though, and the typical internet user over the age of 65 listens to less than 15 minutes per day.
It’s also interesting to note that – despite his divisive appeal – Joe Rogan remains the top podcaster on Spotify, and his show also ranks highly on Apple’s podcast platform.
However, the number of non-English language podcasts that made Spotify’s top 20 for 2024 is equally worthy of note, proving that the format has gained broad appeal all around the world.
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This article is a sub-section of our Digital 2025 Global Overview Report.
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