Edison Research:
In 2015, AM/FM radio accounted for 75% of the time Americans spent
with spoken-word audio sources. AM/FM radio was not only the most
dominant spoken-word audio listening platform, but it was fully
sixty-five percentage points higher than podcasts, which accounted
for 10% of listening time back then. Quarter by quarter and year
over year, time spent using AM/FM radio to listen to spoken-word
audio has declined significantly and shifted to time spent with
podcasts. As of Q4 2025, 40% of time spent listening to
spoken-word is now spent with podcasts and 39% of time is spent
with AM/FM radio. Not only does radio not beat podcasts by a
significant margin, it now trails the on-demand platform for
spoken-word audio listening.
Most of you reading this on Daring Fireball are surely thinking what I thought when I saw this (via TechCrunch): This only happened in 2025? But it goes to show just how long it takes for media consumption habits, in the aggregate, to change.
