Three out of four Americans have now consumed a podcast. That’s a remarkable number — but it also means a significant portion of the country hasn’t. Not because they can’t. Not because the infrastructure isn’t there. In most cases, because nobody has given them a good enough reason.
Download the full report here.
The Last Quarter is the first in-depth look at podcast’s remaining holdouts — drawn from our 5,000-person Podcast Landscape study. Some of what we found will confirm your suspicions. Some of it won’t.
Inside the Report:
- Who the holdouts are — and aren’t. The demographic profile of this group looks nothing like the current podcast audience, and nothing like America as a whole. We break down the sharp leanings by age, gender, geography, race, education, and income.
- What they’re already consuming. They’re not off the grid — they’re just not on your grid. We map their full media diet across audio, video, and social platforms, and identify where the realistic on-ramps to podcasting actually are.
- Why they haven’t tried podcasting. We identified three distinct barrier clusters. Two of them are solvable. One probably isn’t. The report explains which is which — and what to do about it.
- The social problem nobody’s talking about. Word of mouth is the number-one driver of podcast discovery. What happens when your potential audience doesn’t know anyone who listens?
- Which segments are actually reachable. Not all holdouts are created equal. We identify three groups within the last quarter and map specific strategies to each.
About the Research
The Last Quarter is derived from The Podcast Landscape, Sounds Profitable’s annual 5,000-person national study of American adults aged 18+, weighted to the US Census. Made possible by American Public Media, BetterHelp, ESPN Podcasts, NPR, and SiriusXM, with research partners at Signal Hill Insights.
