Triton Digital has released its 2025 U.S. Podcast Report: A Year In Review. This research summary is meant to supplement Triton’s well-known monthly podcast ranker, creating a “Listening Landscape” which measures podcast reach, listener demographics, download methods, audio/video measurements, genre performance, new-listener behaviors, and quite a bit more.
Revolution
This report emphasizes the persistence of podcast growth, as the category engages audiences of all demographics, including new listeners. As such, Triton characterizes the field of study as “The Podcast Revolution in the U.S.”
“Podcasting continues to reach new heights, engaging audiences across every demographic including new listeners.”
Straight off, we learn that listeners trend to youth and maleness. Also, a majority of Hispanic and African American populations listen to podcasts.
Podcast listeners over-index (compared to overall U.S. population) in these attributes:
- college graduate
- income (over $100k; also over $150k)
parent with a child - Black, African American, and Hispanic
When it comes to age:
- 25-44 over-index substantially
- 18-24 and 45-54 over-index slightly
Listening and Watching
Overwhelmingly, this study reveals a fluidity between listening and watching podcasts. Small minorities are committed to either method:
Listen only: 13%
Watch only: 7%
Balancing that paucity, a full 80% of respondents report doing both — watching and listening.
Matching up to that finding, we see that YouTube (which can be used audio-only or audio/video) has taken a dominant lead over the past four years
Genre insights
Triton seeks to understand how the topicality of podcasts affects their consumption attributes. We learn that comedy podcasts have the highest reach, by far; they are consumed by 42% of the overall audience, nearly doubling the reach of News podcasts (#2 on the popularity list).
Which kind of podcasts get the most listening, and which gets the most watching? The graph below breaks out those results.
As a pitch to advertisers and agencies, the Triton study gets down to business with an analysis of “buying intent” — and it turns out that new podcast listeners over-index in eagerness to shop. The study even breaks down the type of shopping. “Fashion clothing” is the winning category. “Luxury Boutiques, Life Insurance, and Weight Loss Products) also score high.
The bottom part of this survey scroll is about the Top Podcasts by Survey conducted by Triton Digital. We cover this material when Triton releases it. Here, we see six different skews of survey data, and an ad for Sounder, Triton’s AI-powered audio intelligence unit.
All in all, this image-based report offers 22 data-packed slides summarizing key metrics of the industry’s performance in 2025. It’s free to all; get it HERE.
