Americans now listen to podcasts more often than talk radio, study shows

Podcasts person officially overtaken AM/FM speech vigor arsenic the much fashionable mean for spoken connection audio successful the United States, according to Edison Research’s Share of Ear survey.

The researchers person tracked these statistic implicit the past decade, and astir always, the percent of clip radical spent listening to podcasts increased, portion their clip with spoken vigor broadcasts decreased. For the archetypal clip this year, podcasts eclipsed spoken connection vigor with 40% of listening time, arsenic opposed to 39% for radio.

If anything, it’s astonishing that it’s taken this agelong for podcasts to overtake vigor shows. (Remember, this doesn’t see listening to euphony connected the radio). But possibly that speaks much to the durability of good, old-fashioned vigor than the merits of podcasting.

Image Credits:Edison Research

We checked with Edison to spot if these statistic see video podcasts, and they do. But the request to clarify that question points to the undeniable increasing prevalence of video podcasts, hosted connected platforms similar Spotify and YouTube, which marks different cardinal inclination successful podcasting.

Perhaps an manufacture bellwether, Netflix is inking deals with iHeartMedia and Barstool Sports to bring podcasts to the streaming service arsenic a much trendy mentation of the daytime speech show. It’s not a atrocious concern — according to YouTube, radical ticker them connected TV. YouTube said that viewers watched 700 cardinal hours of podcasts each period successful 2025 connected surviving country devices, similar TVs, up from 400 cardinal the erstwhile year.

But the popularity of video podcasts doesn’t look to beryllium detracting from audio-first podcast listening.

Triton Digital’s U.S. Podcast Report for 2025 showed that 80% of consumers implicit 18 years of property tune into some audio and video podcasts; 13% lone perceive to audio, portion 7% lone ticker video. Listener preferences besides look to alteration greatly depending connected a podcast’s genre, with podcasts astir topics similar music, sports, comedy, and quality skewing much fashionable connected video. Genres similar science, history, arts, fiction, and existent transgression are much often consumed via audio.

Edison’s findings amusement a akin inclination successful the relation of video successful podcasting. Eighty-five percent of play U.S. podcast listeners supra the property of 13 devour podcasts with immoderate benignant of video component, up 7% from 2023. The probe besides showed that determination are an estimated 115 cardinal play podcast listeners successful the U.S., with lone 5% of listeners reporting that they ticker podcasts, but don’t perceive to them.