Sounds Profitable has issued the first release the 2026 edition of its The Podcast Landscape, its annual study of how Americans consume podcasts. It is labeled Part One: Core Podcast Metrics. There is no information about the release of Part Two.
The underlying survey canvassed 5,473 U.S. adults (18+) in August. That cohort of respondents was weighted to U.S. Census targets. The year-over-year comparisons in this work used the same methodology in 2025. The release document makes this clarification of its boundaries: “This report covers core usage. Discovery, advertising, content, and AI are covered in separate reports.”
We were interested to know the listening lifetime of survey respondents — how long they have been listening. The replies are broken into five time periods with “1-2 years” being the winning (29% answer, as shown below.
Of perennial interest is how consumers think of podcasting as a media type, audio and video being the two choices. We learn that “usually audio-only, but may be video” is the dominant survey answer (38%), far exceeding the “audio only” group (21%). Interestingly, “video only” use gained ground substantially from 2025 to 2026, from 25% to 29%
Many more survey queries about video use follow; selected results below. (We recommend the original report slides.)
A startling 34% of respondents began listening to podcasts less than a year ago; an accelerating trend.
It is no longer a surprise (as in bygone days) that YouTube is the most used consumption app (63%), nearly twice as much as Spotify (33%). When it comes to production platforms … well, YouTube wins there too. YouTube is used by 40% or respondents (same as the 2025 survey), more than twice as much as Spotify (17%).
Listeners differ in their capacity to follow numbers of shows. About a quarter of respondents follow two shows, and about the same number follow three shows — those are the biggest percentages. Ten percent follow five podcasts; three percent follow ten.
Other survey questions explored include:
- How often individuals listen with other people
- the many reasons why people listen to podcasts (in other words, the benefits of listening)
- An elaborate breakdown of listener age, gender, ethnicity, and education for all U.S. adults, and for monthly consumers
- A question about listeners .creating podcasts
- …and more
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