Music, news, politics and comedy top the charts for Australian podcast listeners: YouGov survey

Source: YouGov Profiles

• One in five Australians (20%) claim they listen to a podcast at least once a week. Meanwhile, one in six Australians (16%) listen to a podcast at least once a day. 

• The rest listen to a podcast at least once a month (9%) or lesser than that (13%). Two in five Australians (40%) do not listen to podcasts.

• Podcast listening is concentrated among younger Australians with 27% of those aged 25 to 34 listening at least once a day and 33% listening at least once a week. 

• For those aged 35-44, 26% listen to podcasts once a day or more, and 28% once a week or more.

• Listenership drops off among older age groups with three in five (61%) of 55+ adults saying they do not listen to podcasts at all. 

• Music (29%) is the top podcast genre amongst those who listen to podcasts.

• News & politics (17%) and comedy (14%) in second and third place. Science and true crime genre (10% each) bring up the rear of the list of top ten podcast genres amongst Australians. 

• While a third of male podcast listeners (33%) listen to music podcasts, this proportion falls to a quarter among female listeners (25%).

• Men are also significantly likelier than women to engage with podcasts about news and politics (21% vs. 12%), comedy (17% vs. 12%) and TV & movies (15% vs 9%).

• The largest disparity is around sports podcasts, where a higher number of men consume this genre of podcasts compared to women (17% vs 4%).  

• Women are more likely than men to regularly listen to true crime podcasts (13% vs 8%), as well as health and living podcasts (14% vs 11%).  

 

• Around a quarter of Australians who listen to podcasts use Spotify to do so (24%). That is followed by YouTube (21%) and Apple podcasts (13%).

• Two in five of 18 to 34 and 25 to 34-year-old respondents use Spotify podcasts compared to one in ten of respondents aged 55 and above (11%).  

• Apple Podcasts finds a larger audience among 25 to 44-year-olds as compared to the others. Similarly, ABC Listen is more commonly used by those between 45 to 54 than the rest. 

• Among the genders, YouTube and Spotify are equally popular among men, but among women Spotify is more popular (at 24%) than YouTube (18%).

Methodology: YouGov Profiles is based on continuously collected data and rolling surveys, rather than from a single limited questionnaire. Profiles data for Australia is nationally representative of the online population and weighted by age, gender, education, region, and race. The dataset is from September 2023.