Podcast and audiobook listening at all time highs: Infinite Dial Report 2024

The 2024 Infinite Dial Report for Edison Research is out, showing the percentage of Americans who listen to podcasts, audiobooks and ‘online audio’ is at all time highs.

The percentage of the US population 12+ that has ever listened to a podcast continues to rise consistently, as the medium continues to mature:

Meanwhile, this growth in exposure is translating into habits being increasingly formed, with 34% now listening to podcasts weekly – well above the covid-induced highs of 2021 and up from 31% in 2023:

How many episodes are weekly podcast listeners consuming every week? Over 1 per day, with females consuming more than males at 9.5 per week:

Audiobooks are also at all-time highs, with more than 38% of Americans consuming them in the past year, as they continue to see broader uptake by audio apps such as Spotify:

In the fairly nebulous category that Edison classifies as ‘online audio’, which mostly covers music streaming apps, all time high listenership is also reported. Here, you can see that Spotify is dominating younger demographics, while YouTube Music is competitive in older markets:

Infinite Dial also covers social media usage, given its ever-growing importance to audio marketing and distribution. Having reached maturity, Facebook continues to plateau – while Meta’s other key platform Instagram is no longer growing either. TikTok stays in third place, while Linkedin continues its unlikely steady rise.

Also clear is that X, formerly Twitter, has seen its usership crater to levels it hasn’t seen in 5 years after its messy acquisition and restructure by Elon Musk:

Finally, here we can see the that the generational divide for social platforms is stark – with Facebook totally out of favour with younger users who favour Instagram, TikTok and Snapchat. There are also signs that TikTok is beginning to ‘age up’, with evidence of adoption in that 35+ demographics:

Read the full Infinite Dial report here.