Radio catch-ups dominate in Australian Podcast Ranker’s year-end insights
Radio catch-ups were the most popular genre of podcasts among Australian listeners in 2020, according to year-end insights provided by Commercial Radio Australia and Triton Digital.
The insights, taken from the Australian Podcast Ranker, included data around the most popular devices for listening, the biggest day of the week for podcast listening, as well as the most popular genres of 2020.
Most popular podcast genres 2020
Radio show catch-ups were downloaded 101.3 million times from participating publishers on the Australian Podcast Ranker, significantly ahead of true crime (67.3m) and comedy (63.5m).
Rounding out the top five genres for the year were news (51.9m) and lifestyle/health (33.4m), as podcast downloads totalled 420.8 million for the period from January to November 2020.
Since the Australian Podcast Ranker first launched in October of 2019, the number of unique devices used to listen has risen from 1.8m to 3.3m, and each device is averaging 1.9 hours of podcasts per week.
Commercial Radio Australia CEO Joan Warner hailed an “outstanding” year for podcasting.
“2020 has been an outstanding year for podcasting, with the Australian Podcast Ranker now tracking 2,600 active podcasts across a wide range of genres and publishers,” she said.
“Radio show podcasts were the most active category in 2020, with 101.3 million downloads. This is no surprise as it echoes the strong popularity of radio through the pandemic and reflects the established audiences these shows already have.”
Unsurprisingly, mobile and tablet listening was the most popular way of consuming podcasts, accounting for 93.3% of all podcast listening this year, with desktop/lap making up 3.8% and smart speakers still just 2.2%.
Insights from the ranker, which reports monthly on the top 100 most popular international and Australian shows amongst participating publishers, also found that Thursday was the most popular day for listening (17% of downloads) and Sunday was the least popular (just 10.1% of downloads) of the week.
Triton Digital’s director of market development for APAC, Richard Palmer, said the Australian Podcast Ranker served a need in the market for a consistent, independently-verified report on podcast performance.
“The Australian Podcast Ranker is being embraced and adopted by advertisers, providing valuable insight into both the top podcasts as well as the size, scale, advertising opportunities and key publishers in the market.
“We look forward to adding additional publishers and shows to the ranker in the coming months.”
Got a tip?
Zanda Wilson was a reporter and podcast producer at Mumbrella, specialising in radio reporting. He left Mumbrella in September 2021.
Linkedin
topics
Australian Podcast Ranker
Commercial Radio Australia
Joan Warner
podcasts
Richard Palmer
Triton Digital
