Podtrac coronavirus tracking: New high for downloads; upward spike for comedy

Podtrac sent us the latest weekly update of U.S. podcast listening, both in downloads and audience, amid the COVID-19 pandemic. (You can see everything HERE.)

POdtrac also informed us that this is the last installment of its weekly COVID-19 tracking. “Things are getting back to normal on a weekly basis,” CEO Mark McCrery told RAIN.

Its latest data is for the week of May 25 – May 31. The data show a 4% dip for audience and downloads during this week, compared to the previous week. For the year, downloads are up 31% compared to the first week of January, and +13% for audience. With the exception of Memorial Day, downloads during peak weekday commute times continued to trend up since a low point — the week of April 13-19.

Here is the download/audience chart, in which we can see that downloads reach a new year-to-date high for the first time since the week ending March 2, before shelter-at-home kicked in.

The Top Categories chart for this week is always interesting to us. The high-flying News category still prevails, but look at the Comedy line rampaging upward to nearly the same altitude. And the comedy category is still  flying at high altitude. Both of those top categories dipped during the week.

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