More than three in four (77%) U.S. weekly podcast listeners 13+ say they have ever binge-listened to a podcast as of third quarter 2023. But listeners to some genres are more inclined to have binged a podcast than listeners who consume other genres, according to new data from Edison Podcast Metrics.
Unlike podcast rankings, built from download data, Edison’s Podcast Metrics is based on consumer recall, allowing it to capture weekly podcast listening across all networks, shows, and platforms. The quarterly survey asks participants which podcasts they listened to in the past week.
The Edison Research podcast service defines binge listening as listening to or watching multiple episodes of a podcast within a single sitting. The survey is able to measure the percentage of respondents who recorded listening to a podcast from a specific genre in the past week. Edison defines a podcast's genre using its primary genre in Apple Podcasts.
Podcast listeners who have consumed a Fiction or a True Crime podcast in the past week are the listeners who are most likely to have ever binge-listened. Some 93% of weekly listeners to Fiction podcasts and 90% of weekly True Crime listeners have ever binged. On the other end of the spectrum, podcast listeners who have consumed a News or Technology podcast in the past week are the least likely to have ever binge-listened. However, the latter two genres still lend themselves to some impressive binge listening: 73% of weekly news podcast listeners and 72% of weekly technology listeners have ever binged a podcast.
“These percentages demonstrate just how engaged weekly podcasts listeners are and how captivating podcast content can be,” Edison says. “Knowing how different listeners engage with podcasts is essential to creating and marketing new shows and content.