There is a wealth of podcast data coming out for the UK at the moment.

Since the full report is coming out next week (sign up here for the webinar on May 29), I won’t spend too much time on it now. But there are a few slides that are worth sharing.

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Familiarity with podcasting is now at 89% – or 44 million. That’s risen substantially since 2021 when the last survey was carried out.

The number of people who have ever listened to a podcast is at 68% of the adult population, up from 59% last time around.

There is a lot of variation in what “the most popular” podcast player is today. Edison’s research for the UK shows it to be Spotify. However, it’s also important to point out that this is a “used most often” measure. That’s not quite the same thing as “listen to the most”. Also, different surveys ask questions differently, so you can’t compare directly with one another. Nevertheless, Apple Podcasts feels surprisingly small given Apple’s close to 50% market share in the UK.

We know how important video has become to podcasting (regardless of your own views), and the Infinite Dial measures this. But the chart above includes duplication – many both listen and watch a podcast. So the following chart is perhaps more useful.

That shows those who have ever listened and/or watched a podcast. The monthly number is more useful.

This shows that 25 million are consuming podcasts across audio and video in a given month. With 46% saying they listen to podcasts in a given month, this rises to 51% listening or watching. We can infer that 5% of the UK population is reporting that they watch a podcast but don’t listen.

Edison also broke out the numbers by gender and age.

There does seem to be a growing difference between men and women listening or watching podcasts. But this is also driven by age.

Edison also asked where people listen, with at home being by far the biggest.

In their teaser, they also talked about device ownership and in-car integration. There have been big increases in having Apple CarPlay and Android Auto which of course amongst other things, makes podcast listening in cars much easier. I’ll finish with that chart, but will return for a more detailed look once the full report has been released next week.

Methodology: Edison Research conducted a UK national survey of 1,313 people aged 16 and older (N=318 telephone respondents, N=995 online respondents). Data weighted to national 16+ population figures. Findings tracked to the 2021 Infinite Dial UK report.