Podtrac: Reach And Downloads Climb In January As iHeart, NPR Lead Rebound.

January brought rebounding reach and download numbers for a majority of publishers that Podtrac measures, a typical post-holiday season phenomenon. It reports that 14 of the top 18 posted month-to-month increases in unique users last month, while 12 had more downloads in January than December.

The top spot was again held by iHeartPodcasts and its related ad network, which was among those that posted month-over-month growth. Podtrac says iHeartPodcasts had 170 million downloads and streams during January, up 3 million from December. And iHeart had more than 30 million unique U.S. listeners last month.

At the same time, the iHeart Audience Network — which includes not only its shows but roughly 24,000 podcasts from other publishers — had a combined 339 million downloads and streams in January. It had 61 million U.S. listeners.

NPR, after several months of a split decision with Acast, has pulled ahead. The public media network had more downloads and audience last month, with nearly 120 million downloads in the U.S. during January, and unique audience of nearly 21 million. The Acast sales network of shows had 79 million downloads in the U.S. during January, up roughly 1 million from a month earlier, and a unique audience of 20 million.

Libsyn continues to round out the top five. Podtrac says it had 83 million downloads and a U.S. reach of more than 17 million last month, both of which were roughly even with the prior month.

The big mover in Podtrac’s ranking of the top podcasts among the publishers it works with was Daily Wire’s “The Ben Shapiro Show.” It bounced back into the top 10 with a five-position move up to No. 7. The turbulent news month also returned the “NPR Politics Podcast” to the top 20, while The New York Times-produced “The Ezra Klein Show” made its first appearance on the ranking at No. 14.

Overall, most other changes were minor. Podtrac reports “NPR News Now,” the on-demand hourly newscast from the public radio network, remained in first place in September. 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 remained in third place last month.

Podtrac’s global rankings, which include not only U.S. listening, but also that done around the world, tells a growth story for January. Six of the eight publishers had a bigger unique monthly audience last month vs. December. Half were up in U.S. downloads month-to-month.

The iHeart Audience Network again topped the company’s global ranking. It says iHeart had 799 million downloads and views — an increase of 41 million from a month earlier — with 32% of those coming from YouTube views. That’s despite the fact that just 89 shows in the iHeart network of more than 34,000 podcasts were distributed on the video streaming platform. Those numbers are expected to change in the coming months after iHeartMedia announced it would make several series exclusive to Netflix.

Podtrac says two other publishers it tracks globally had more YouTube views than RSS-based audio listeners. That included Libsyn, which had 193 million YouTube views vs. 107 million audio downloads and streams.

No publisher had a bigger reliance on YouTube than Paramount. Based on Podtrac numbers, 60% of Paramount’s global consumption last month was via YouTube views.

The rankings are 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.