Weekly Podcast Data Amid the Coronavirus Crisis - Update through March 29, 2020

Weekly podcast downloads and audiences are trending down since March 9th while overall growth in downloads and audiences is still positive year-to-date

Lots of people have questions about what’s happening in the podcast space as the COVID-19 crisis unfolds.  Podtrac measures over a billion podcast downloads a month, so each week we’ll keep everyone up to date with weekly summaries of download and audience data across all the shows we measure.  

Last week we provided data on the top podcast categories, and we had questions about the other categories, so this week we added charts for all 19 categories.  

Year-To-Date U.S. Weekly Podcast Download and Audience Growth


Download growth since the first week of January is up 25% and audience growth is up 8% through the week ending March 29, 2020. 

Week-Over-Week U.S. Podcast Download and Audience Growth

U.S. podcast downloads decreased 1% during the week ending March 15, 2020, 2% the week ending March 22, and 4% the week ending March 29 across all Podtrac measured podcasts.  

U.S. weekly podcast audiences decreased 2% the week ending March 15, 8% the week ending March 22, and 5% the week ending March 29.  

Year-To-Date U.S. Weekly Podcast Download Growth for Top Categories

For Podtrac measured shows, download growth year-to-date for top podcast categories is: +67% for News, +39% for Business, +29% for Comedy, +8% for Sports, and +6% for Society & Culture through the week ending March 29.


Week-Over-Week U.S. Podcast Download Growth for Top Categories

For Podtrac measured shows, downloads for the week ending March 29 compared to the week ending March 22 for top podcast categories is: +10% for Business, -4% for Comedy, -5% for Society & Culture, -6% for News, and -10% for Sports.


Year-To-Date U.S. Weekly Podcast Download Growth for All Categories

For Podtrac measured shows, download growth year-to-date by category through the week ending March 29 is: +67% for News, +39% for Business, +31% for Government, +29% for Comedy, +27% for Science, +24% for Kids & Family, +8% for Sports, +7% for History, +7% for Leisure, +6% for Society & Culture, +6% for Health & Fitness, +4% for Religion & Spirituality, +2% for Technology, +2% for TV and Film, +2% for Arts, -3% for Music, -9% for True Crime, -16% Education and -32% for Fiction.

Week-Over-Week U.S. Podcast Download Growth for All Categories

For Podtrac measured shows, category downloads week-over-week for the week ending March 29 compared to the week ending March 22 are:  -6% for News, +10% for Business, -10% for Government, -4% for Comedy, +9% for Science, +9% for Kids & Family, -10% for Sports,-17% for History, -8% for Leisure, -5% for Society & Culture, -7% for Health & Fitness, +2% for Religion & Spirituality, -19% for Technology, -12% for TV and Film, 0% for Arts, -1% for Music, -1% for True Crime, -12% Education and +19% for Fiction.


Year-To-Date U.S. Weekly Podcast Audience Growth for Top Categories

Weekly category audience year-to-date for top podcast categories through the week ending March 29 is:  +29% for News, +11% for Business, +12% for Comedy, -6% for Sports, +2% for Society & Culture.

New Weekly Podcast Data Amid the COVID-19 Crisis

Weekly podcast downloads and audiences trend downward post March 9th while overall growth in downloads and audiences is still positive year-to-date

Lots of people have questions about what’s happening in the podcast space as the COVID-19 crisis unfolds.  We were curious as well, so took a look at our data to identify trends. Each week, Podtrac will keep everyone up to date with weekly summaries of download and audience data across all the shows we measure.  


Year-To-Date U.S. Weekly Podcast Download and Audience Growth

Download growth since the first week of January is 31% and audience growth is 14% through the week ending March 22, 2020. 

Week-Over-Week U.S. Podcast Download and Audience Growth

U.S. podcast downloads decreased 1% during the week ending March 15, 2020 and 2% the week ending March 22 across all Podtrac measured podcasts.  U.S. weekly podcast audiences decreased 2% the week ending March 15 and 8% the week ending March 22.  

Year-To-Date U.S. Weekly Podcast Download Growth for Top Categories

Across Podtrac measured shows, download growth year-to-date (through March 22) for top podcast categories is:  74% for News, 34% for Comedy, 21% for Sports, 12% for Society & Culture, and -8% for True Crime.

Week-Over-Week U.S. Podcast Download Growth by Category

For Podtrac measured shows, download growth week-over-week for the week ending March 22 compared to the week ending March 15 for top podcast categories is:  -1% for News, -5% for Comedy, -5% for Sports, -2% for Society & Culture, and -10% for True Crime.

Year-To-Date U.S. Weekly Podcast Audience Growth for Top Categories

Weekly category audience year-to-date for top podcast categories is:  36% for News, 14% for Comedy, 7% for Sports, 5% for Society & Culture, and -6% for True Crime through the week ending March 22.

Top 20 Podcasts: February 2020

Podtrac's ranking of the Top 20 Podcasts based on U.S. Unique Monthly Audience for February 2020 is now available at Podtrac.com.

Visit Podtrac.com to sign-up to receive monthly updates to Podtrac's Top 20 Podcasts and Top 15 Podcast Publishers ranking reports.



*With the increasing popularity of shows which publish multiple times a day, beginning in December 2019, we now include theses shows in the Podtrac Top Podcast ranking. Previously these shows were excluded. While the counts for these shows are IAB V2 compliant, it should be noted that a segment of their audience members may listen to these shows from multiple locations throughout the day and present themselves technically as multiple unique users.




February 2020- Top Podcast Publishers

The Top Podcast Publishers ranking for February 2020 is now available at Podtrac.com.

Highlights of the ranking include:

  • All Top 15 publishers increased US Unique Monthly Audience in February over January.

  • The average Unique Monthly Audience for the top 10 publishers increased by 9% from January while it increased by 41% from February of 2019.

  • Global Unique Streams & Downloads decreased for the top 10 publishers by 4% over January - consistent with the shorter month.

Note: As of April 2019, Global Downloads and Streams reflect updates to Podtrac’s measurement algorithm and are not directly comparable to months prior to April 2019. Unique Monthly Audience numbers were not impacted by this update.

3/7/20

Top 20 Podcasts: January 2020

Podtrac's ranking of the Top 20 Podcasts based on U.S. Unique Monthly Audience for January 2020 is now available at Podtrac.com.

Visit Podtrac.com to sign-up to receive monthly updates to Podtrac's Top 20 Podcasts and Top 15 Podcast Publishers ranking reports.


*With the increasing popularity of shows which publish multiple times a day, beginning in December 2019, we now include theses shows in the Podtrac Top Podcast ranking. Previously these shows were excluded. While the counts for these shows are IAB V2 compliant, it should be noted that a segment of their audience members may listen to these shows from multiple locations throughout the day and present themselves technically as multiple unique users.



January 2020- Top Podcast Publishers

The Top Podcast Publishers ranking for January 2020 is now available at Podtrac.com.

Highlights of the ranking include:

  • Three publishers moved up in the rankings in January while 4 moved down and all others held their positions from December.

  • Cumulus Media/Westwood One joined the ranking this month at #11.

  • The average Unique Monthly Audience for the top 10 publishers decreased by 5% from December 2019 while it increased by 37% from January of 2019.

  • Global Unique Streams & Downloads increased for the top 10 publishers by 20% over December.

  • In January 2020, Podtrac measured 1.3 billion IAB certified downloads across all measured publishers, up 21% from December 2019.

  • Note: In January, most publishers experienced a drop in UMA with a simultaneous increase in downloads. This divergence was precipitated by a popular podcast app providing less-specific User Agent data on which the IAB UMA algorithm relies. Podtrac is currently working on a refinement to the UMA algorithm to address this issue.

Note: As of April 2019, Global Downloads and Streams reflect updates to Podtrac’s measurement algorithm and are not directly comparable to months prior to April 2019. Unique Monthly Audience numbers were not impacted by this update.

Top 20 Podcasts: December 2019

Podtrac's ranking of the Top 20 Podcasts based on U.S. Unique Monthly Audience for December 2019 is now available at Podtrac.com.

Visit Podtrac.com to sign-up to receive monthly updates to Podtrac's Top 20 Podcasts and Top 10 Podcast Publishers ranking reports.

*With the increasing popularity of shows which publish multiple times a day, such as NPR News Now, beginning in December, we now include theses shows in the Podtrac Top Podcast ranking. Previously these shows were excluded. While the counts for these shows are IAB V2 compliant, it should be noted that a segment of their audience members may listen to these shows from multiple locations throughout the day and present themselves technically as multiple unique users.


December 2019- Top Podcast Publishers

The Top 10 Podcast Publishers ranking for December 2019 is now available at Podtrac.com.

Highlights of the ranking include:

  • The Top 10 Podcast Publisher ranking has expanded to the Top 15. Look for further expansion in the coming months.

  • We’ve also added a Sales Contact column to facilitate potential advertisers in connecting with top shows. Visit the ranking at Podtrac.com to click-through to full contact information on participating publishers.

  • For December 2019, the Top 10 publishers average Unique Monthly Audience is up 5% over November 2019 and up 44% over December 2018.

Note: As of April 2019, Global Downloads and Streams reflect updates to Podtrac’s measurement algorithm and are not directly comparable to months prior to April 2019. Unique Monthly Audience numbers were not impacted by this update.




















Top 20 Podcasts: November 2019 - REVISED

We’ve updated the Podtrac November 2019 Top 20 Podcasts ranking, removing two shows from American Media LLC.  We learned today, from some heroic testing from James Cridland of Podnews, that an older version of a website player used by American Media downloads their podcasts without the user pressing play in the specific case of Android mobile users.  Preloading content is not consistent with IAB V2 standards. We have removed these downloads from our data.     

We looked at the incidence of this player version across all Podtrac measured podcasts, and other than this publisher, 0.1% of podcast downloads came from this same version of the player, and none of these came from the top 2,000 podcasts measured by Podtrac.  Podtrac has added this version of the player to our blacklist and has notified the IAB Podcast Technical Working Group to do the same. Going forward downloads from this player will not be included in Podtrac counts.    

Below is the revised Ranking.