A short update this week, as we ready the first report from our annual Podcast Landscape study (you can register for the webinar, to be held this Thursday, right here.) One of the questions we ask each year from our sample of over 5,000 Americans is their favorite podcast. This is not a listening measure, but a measure of preference.
Last year, the top answer was, as you probably have guessed, The Joe Rogan Experience. This year’s chart saw very few surprises, with a couple of interesting quirks:
First things first: 1% is not a small number. That represents a couple of million Americans 18+ who say that Smartless or Stuff You Should Know is their favorite podcast, which is up there with many network television programs (and the listening figures are probably even higher – remember, this is just the number of Americans who say that a show is their favorite.)
The podcast audience continues to be very fragmented, with many shows near or at the 1% figure shown in the graph. There are a few new entrants this year, including Mel Robbins and Mr. Ballen, but much of the chart should look very familiar to you. Two other differences that I would point out concern the top five, which are largely the same as last year.
Most of the top five saw marked growth in top of mind preference over last year. Crime Junkie was at 2% last year, as was The Daily. Call Her Daddy showed the most growth, at 3% up from 1% last year. So there has definitely been a consolidation of preference for some of the biggest hits in podcasting, ith one, very outsized exception: Joe Rogan.
Last year, the JRE was named the favorite podcast by 13% of Americans 18+ who had ever consumed a podcast, and this year, it’s down to 11%. Week to week, in the various charts that track downloads and listening, we can see other podcasts (like Diary Of A CEO) nipping at the heels of Rogan, and this is just another sign that the previously impenetrable moat around the popularity of the Joe Rogan Experience might be showing some signs of weakness. Some of that might also be down to the current political climate, which also might explain a couple of last year’s top 20 shows (Ben Shapiro and Dan Bongino) falling out of this year’s list.
One thing is very clear about this year compared to last year, however. In 2024, Joe Rogan had an 11 percentage point lead over the number two podcast, and this year that lead is down to seven percentage points. To me, that is a sign of the continued health and growing maturity of the podcast space. And it’s not the only one, as you will soon see when we release our first report from The Podcast Landscape 2025 tomorrow. Be there or be, um, somewhat less informed!
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