In today’s release of The Infinite Dial 2025 by Edison Research, one of the annually significant metrics is the number of people listening to online audio monthly, and the percentage of U.S. population represented by that number.
It is 228 million people.
We remember the excitement when this graph crossed over the 50 percent mark in 2015, when Edison discovered that 53% of Americans listened to online audio monthly. (RAIN HERE.)
In today’s release we see that number stretching upward from last year, and not quite touching 80 percent as shown below.
There is some granularity about the chart above, when broken into age groups. Monthly online listening is led by youth across three years:
- The 12-34 cohort leads the pack with 90 percent monthly listeners for the second year. (It was 89% the year before.)
- The middle-aged 35-54 cluster listens nearly as much, in the high 80’s percent.
- Above age 55, the degree of online audio listening stands at 63% this year — but that is an impressive jump from 52% last year.
Weekly Listening
The 79% metric above, for monthly listening to online audio, is impressive. Just as eye-opening is the weekly number, which Edison discovers is 73% of Americans listening to online audio. That number ticked up four percent from the 2024 result of 70 percent, same as the 2023 number, as illustrated below:
The Brands
One of Edison’s annual questions is about online audio brand awareness — testing the respondents’ knowledge of online audio services. As in past Infinite Dial iterations, Spotify wins the brand awareness rate with 87% recognition, followed closely by Pandora.
The question gets refined when the survey asks about online audio brands used in the last month. IN that question, YouTube Music rises from fifth to second, bumping Pandora down to third.
Edison isn’t finished with this yet. The next survey question is about which online audio service is used most often — so, more of a lifestyle question. Spotify wins across all ages, and wins biggest (47%) in the 12-34 segment. Pandora crashes in that age group, while YouTube holds pretty steady.
