The Memorial Day holiday brought parades, barbeques, and the expected dip in downloads. Podtrac says downloads slid two percent week-to-week for May 30 to June 5 which included the holiday weekend. Despite that decrease, the story is one of growth overall as downloads were up 55% versus the same period a year ago.
The holiday weekend had some clearcut winners. Podtrac says both the Comedy and History genres downloads jumped eight percent despite a disruption in regular listening patterns for many Americans. The other big categories were down with Health & Fitness – the biggest gainer in the two prior weeks – down the most. Podtrac says that genre had a seven percent drop in downloads last week. Also losing ground were True Crime, News, Society & Culture, Business, and Sports – each was down four percent week-to-week. The Science genre’s downloads were down a little more – off five percent – while Arts shows had the smallest drop, sliding one percent from a week earlier.
Podtrac reported earlier that ten of the top 20 publishers it measures had an increase in their unique media audience numbers during April. The top publisher remained iHeartRadio, with more than 441 million downloads and streams and a unique U.S. audience of 31 million. The rest of the top five was also the same: NPR, Wondery, New York Times, and NBC News.
In terms of downloads, Podtrac says global downloads for the top 20 publishers overall were down five percent month-over-month during April. But they grew 31% compared to the download numbers from a year earlier.
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