NPR and Edison Research have released the fifth iteration of the Spoken Word Audio Report. This year’s report highlights several key spoken word audio data points among people in the U.S. age 13+, notably that spoken word audience size and time spent listening continues to reach new heights. More Americans are listening to spoken word content every day, and more time is spent with spoken word sources overall.
The report also chronicles differences by location, highlighting significant growth of at-home listening to spoken word audio. One standout feature is that not only are Americans 13+ spending more time listening to spoken word audio, but this growth in time spent listening is being sparked by the younger 13-34 age segment.
For context, Share of Ear historical data goes back to 2014. That year, 20% of all audio time was spent listening to spoken word audio among people in the U.S. 13+. This is now 31%. Such growth is encouraging for spoken word audio content creators and marketers.
But Americans aged 13-34 are also listening for longer. Nine years ago, this group only spent 12% of their daily audio time with spoken word sources. This has ballooned to 30% of their total audio time, a rate of change that is significantly higher than what we see from older groups.
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