Triton Digital has released its U.S. Podcast Ranker for the September 2024 reporting period (Sept. 2–29, 2024), as measured by Triton’s Podcast Metrics measurement service. Triton Digital also collaborated with Signal Hill Insights to analyze political podcast downloads and audience trends ahead of the U.S. presidential election.
Key insights from the analysis include:
- Political podcasts have seen a 28% increase in year-over-year downloads, with incremental growth over the last six months.
- Democrat-leaning podcasts receive twice as many downloads as Republican-leaning ones. However, Democrat-leaning podcasts saw their share of total political podcast downloads decline from 58% to 56% year-over-year, while Republican-leaning podcasts increased from 23% to 28%.
- Political podcast listeners tend to be older, highly educated, and affluent compared to the U.S. general adult population: 59.7% are college graduates, 31.9% have a household income exceeding $100,000, and nearly half (47.2%) are 55 years or older.
- Republican-leaning podcast listeners, while still more affluent and educated than the U.S. population, under-index compared to Democrat and Independent-leaning podcast listeners on these attributes. They also have the highest proportion (89.9%) of White/Caucasian listeners. Democrat-leaning podcasts have the largest share (17.4%) of Black/African American listeners.
- Independent-leaning podcasts attract the highest proportion (16.2%) of Hispanic listeners. Their audience is 68.2% college-educated and 62.4% male.
Political lean is based on Triton Digital Podcast Metrics Demos+ data for political affiliation.
September U.S. podcast ranker data
iHeart Audience Network retained the top spot on the Top Sales Networks Report for September with 69.2 million average weekly downloads and 19.9 million average weekly users. SiriusXM Podcast Network ranked second again with 41.6 million average weekly downloads and 13.7 million average weekly users, followed by NPR in third with 26.1 million average weekly downloads and 7.1 million average weekly users.
The top three podcasts by downloads for September were “NPR News Now” (NPR) at #1, “Up First” (NPR) at #2, and “Crime Junkie” (audiochuck) at #3. For listeners, the top three were “NPR News Now” (NPR) at #1, “Crime Junkie” (audiochuck) at #2, and “Up First” (NPR) at #3.
Several new podcasts debuted in September, including “Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard” (Wondery), “So Supernatural” (SiriusXM Podcast Network), “New Heights with Jason and Travis Kelce” (Wondery), and “The Lincoln Project” (Soundrise/Resolute Square).
New debuts for downloads included “NFL Daily with Gregg Rosenthal” (iHeart Audience Network), “Where Everybody Knows Your Name with Ted Danson and Woody Harrelson (sometimes)” (SiriusXM Podcast Network), and “All In with Chris Hayes” (NBCUniversal News Group).
New debuts for listeners included “3 and Out with John Middlekauff” (iHeart Audience Network), “Club 520 Podcast” (iHeart Audience Network), and “Countdown with Keith Olbermann” (iHeart Audience Network).
You can see Triton’s latest U.S. Podcast Ranking here.
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