Podtrac: iHeart Retains Top Spot As Listening Rebounds In August.

The summer months often impact listening habits, but August began the transition back to normal life — and podcast listening. Podtrac reports that 14 of the top 20 publishers last month had higher unique monthly audiences than in the prior month. And six had increases in downloads.

What didn’t change in August was the publisher at the top, as Podtrac again says that iHeartPodcasts was top publisher among the companies it measures, as well as the biggest network. Last month, iHeart had 34 million U.S. listeners in August and 163 million downloads and streams. At the same time, the iHeart Audience Network — which includes not only its shows but roughly 20,000 podcasts from other publishers — had a combined 69 million U.S. listeners in August and 337 million downloads and streams.

The NPR Sales Network, which includes 67 podcasts from public media producers, logged 111 million downloads last month as its U.S. audience reached 21 million. Libsyn’s sales network ranked fourth with 20 million U.S. listeners and 87 million downloads. Acast’s sales network rounded out the top five in August, with nearly 20 million listeners and downloads that totaled about 74 million.

August brought another 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 784 million downloads, streams and YouTube views. Podtrac says iHeart’s total included more than 271 million YouTube views to the 89 shows in the iHeart network that stream on the video platform.

Acast was the second-largest global network measured by Podtrac last month. It measured 373 million downloads, streams and views for the 63,832 shows in Acast’s network — the biggest by far of any measured by Podtrac. Libsyn ranked third globally with 295 million downloads last month.

As seen in the past few months, Paramount’s network was once again powered by more YouTube views than audio downloads. Podtrac says the shows in Paramount’s network had nearly 43 million YouTube views worldwide in August, while its audio downloads and streams totaled 39 million.

Listening numbers may soften during summer, but what people were listening to largely remained the same. Podtrac’s show rankings are based on unique U.S. audience numbers, not downloads. That could be one reason for the relatively stable rankings during a time of year when habits are disrupted.

Podtrac reports NPR News Now, the on-demand hourly newscast from the public radio network, remained in first place in August. That kept it in front of The New York Times morning news podcast The Daily, which ranked second, edging out NPR’s morning news podcast Up First, which again held onto third place last month. There was some movement in the top, however, as Fox Audio Network’s Fox News Hourly Update swapped spots with NBC News true crime series Dateline NBC, reversing a move the two shows made in July.

Meantime, Daily Wire’s The Ben Shapiro Show returned to the top 10 with a five-point rise to No. 8. There were two bigger moves in the top 20 as Hidden Brain jumped 10 spots to land at No. 19 in August, while WNYC Studio’s Radiolab moved up 15 positions to No. 20.

The ranking is based on Podtrac measurement data for U.S. unique monthly audience for any show that was measured for the entire month. While measurement is free for any podcast, the ranking only includes those shows that have opted in. It means that some of the biggest podcasts, like The Joe Rogan Experience, and shows from companies like SiriusXM, Spotify and Wondery, are not included in the measurement.