Health & Fitness Category Was Big Winner Last Week Says Podtrac.

A more normal lifestyle and the quest to drop those pandemic pounds has Americans thinking about their health and bodies when they sort through their podcast options. For yet another week Podtrac reports the Health & Fitness category had the biggest week-to-week growth rate. Downloads were up nine percent last week. And compared to a year ago, shows in the genre had a 183% jump in downloads.

Overall, Podtrac says among the shows and publishers it measures downloads were up one percent last week. And they were up 70% over the corresponding period last year for Podtrac measured shows.

Last week had mixed results depending which category a podcast was in. Among the other show genres, the numbers show Society & Culture (+3%), News (+3%), Arts (+3%), and Sports (+2%) had gains week-to-week. But Podtrac reports Comedy (-4%), True Crime (-3%), Science (-3%), and Business (-2%) were down. The History genre was flat week-to-week. Yet even for those show categories that had an off week, each had a double-digit increase in their downloads compared to a year ago.

Podtrac reported earlier that global downloads for the top 20 publishers overall increased one percent month-over-month during May. And they grew 32% compared to the download numbers from a year earlier.

Five of the top 20 publishers posted an increase in their unique monthly U.S. audience in May compared to April – the rest were either down or flat. The average publisher had a four percent month-over-month decrease in their U.S. unique monthly audience during May. But compared to a year earlier, May 2022’s unique reach for the top 20 publishers was up 11% versus May 2021.

Podtrac said iHeartRadio was the biggest publisher in May among those its measures, followed by NPR, Wondery, the New York Times, and NBC News.