Australians downloaded 2.8 million podcasts every day in 2023
Over one billion podcasts were downloaded in Australia last year, with the national appetite for the audio format increasing by an impressive 26% in just 12 months.
This is according to the Australian Podcast Ranker, compiled by CRA and Triton Digital, which clocked 1.03 billion podcast downloads for the year – equating to 2.8 million downloads each day.
Considering that this only includes podcasts that are tracked by the Australian Podcast Ranker, the actual figure is likely to be a lot higher.
Hamish & Andy was the most popular podcast of 2023, with an average of 841,364 listeners per month. Monotone crime podcast Casefile was second most-listened to, with 813,514 monthly listeners, while Mamamia Out Loud pulled 585,194 listeners.
Australian-made content continues to resonate, with 15 of the top 20 podcasts in the December Podcast Ranker charts being local productions.
The average Australian listener spends 2.3 hours a week listening to podcasts, and downloads 3.95 podcasts a week.
In terms of genres, ‘society and culture’ was the most popular, with 4.07 million average monthly listeners, followed by comedy (3.95 million), true crime (3.75 million), news (3.66 million), and sports (2.71 million).
Thursday is the peak day for podcast downloaded, and 8 am is the peak listening hour. As a sign of the times, 94% of all listening happens on a mobile device.
“It has been an incredible year for podcasts and the Australian Podcast Ranker, with eight new publishers coming on board in 2023, including the ABC in November,” said Ford Ennals, CEO of CRA.
“Underlying it all is that podcasts are now part of many Australians’ everyday lives. We are the largest consumers of podcasts globally, with 43 per cent listening every month.
“Australian listeners are dedicated to home grown as well as the best of international content. Four out of the top five podcasts of 2023 and 15 out of the top 20 most popular podcasts in December were produced locally.”
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Nathan Jolly is the Features Editor at Mumbrella. He joined the team in July, 2023.
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