Triton Digital releases 2024 US Podcast Report

Triton Digital, the global technology and services leader to the digital audio, podcast, and broadcast radio industries, today released its third annual U.S. Podcast Report. The report provides insights into the evolving U.S. podcast landscape for 2024, including listening habits, audience demographic data, and insights into the top podcasts, networks, and debuts from the Triton U.S. Podcast Ranker, and more.

According to the report, the number of monthly podcast listeners continues to rise with 23% growth over the past three years and almost 10% over the past year. In 2024, 44% of the U.S. population reported listening to a podcast within the past month. These listeners were found to be younger, more educated, more affluent, and more diverse. Podcasting has proven to be an engaging and powerful medium for storytelling, conversations, current events and entertainment. Other notable findings include:

• YouTube continues to be the preferred platform for most listeners, capturing 33% of listeners in 2024—its highest share yet—marking a steady rise from 27% in 2021.
• The top podcast genres of 2024 were News (25% of downloads), True Crime (19%), and Comedy (13%). Of True Crime podcast listeners, 67% were female, of Comedy podcast listeners, 61% were male, and of News podcast listeners, 56% were male.
• The top sales networks of 2024 in the Triton U.S. Podcast Ranker were iHeart Audience Network at #1, SiriusXM Podcast Network at #2, and NPR at #3.
• NPR News Now (NPR) remained the top podcasts in 2024. Crime Junkie’s “SERIAL KILLER: The Alphabet Murders Part 1” episode was the most downloaded, while MURDERED: JonBenét Ramsey was the most popular, based on downloads in the first 30 days.
• Bongino Report Early Edition with Evita (Cumulus Podcast Network) had the #1 debut in 2024.

The report incorporates data from multiple sources, including IAB Tech Lab certified Triton Podcast Metrics service, which measures server log data from the Triton Omny Studio platform and a variety of other industry hosting platforms. It also includes data from Triton Podcast Metrics Demos+ solution, which provides demographics and audience characteristics for podcasts of all sizes, as well as the Demos+ survey of 12,000 monthly podcast listeners in the U.S., done in collaboration with Signal Hill Insights.

“2024 marked another year of remarkable growth for the podcast industry, with listenership broadening across demographics and becoming more mainstream than ever,” said Daryl Battaglia, SVP Measurement Products & Strategy, Triton Digital. “As new audiences dive into podcasts and spend more time listening, fueling deeper engagement, genres like True Crime, Kids & Family, and History drive the highest back catalog consumption, creating untapped opportunities for programmatic advertising. At Triton Digital, we remain dedicated to providing deep insights into listener behavior and platform preferences as this dynamic medium continues to evolve.”

Download the full 2024 U.S. Podcast Report.

To learn more about participating in Triton Digital’s podcast and streaming rankers, please contact: solutions@tritondigital.com.