April Brings Stability And Modest Gains To U.S. Podcast Market, Podtrac Reports.

Podtrac says April podcast listening brought primarily gains or steady month-to-month results for the publishers it measures. For the top 20, all but seven posted either gains or were flat in their total number of unique users during April. It was a similar story when comparing U.S. downloads in April compared to a month earlier.

The top publisher among those ranked by Podtrac remains iHeartPodcasts. Its unique monthly audience increased 2% month-to-month to 33.5 million in April. At the same time the iHeart Audience Network, which included 27,624 shows published by iHeart and all its various partners, had more than 375 million downloads in the U.S. last month, which was a 1% gain from March.

NPR saw a small dip in its unique monthly audience in April, although it remained over the 22 million level, while its total U.S. downloads and streams were up 2% month-to-month to top 123 million in April.

Libsyn had small declines in both metrics, but Podtrac says its results were good enough to bypass Acast. Libsyn’s total U.S. reach was 21.8 million last month, with 98.4 million downloads. At the same time, Acast suffered a 9% drop in its U.S. unique monthly audience, which totaled 20.1 million. And its U.S. downloads were off 13% month-to-month, to 74.3 million.

Podtrac says Paramount moved into the top ten among publishers last month, as Daily Wire slipped back to No. 11 in a ranker that had relatively little movement. WNYC edged ahead of This American Life, while Lemonada also traded spots with The Athletic.

April brought a win for the iHeart Audience Network not just in the U.S. but across the globe. Podtrac says it was the biggest global network last month, with 750 million downloads, streams and YouTube views around the world. Podtrac says iHeart’s total included more than 173 million YouTube views, showing the growing role for the video streaming platform in podcast consumption not just in the U.S., but globally.

Podtrac did not release YouTube breakouts for any of the other global network tallies as it has in the past, but it reports the order remained the same as in March. Acast was the second-largest global network measured by Podtrac in April. It measured 388 million downloads, streams and views for the 68,427 shows in Acast’s network — the biggest by far of any measured by Podtrac.

While Libsyn overtook Acast in the U.S., it ranked third globally with 232 million downloads. But similar to iHeart and Acast, it had softer numbers globally last month when compared to a month earlier. In fact, Podtrac reports just one of the global networks — The Athletic — had month-to-month increases.

Podtrac’s rankings only include publishers and networks that subscribe to its service, which means that some large podcast distributors, such as SiriusXM, Spotify and Wondery, are not included in its monthly update.