In a recent article in The Conversation, according to 2023 data from The Infinite Dial – which tracks digital media use internationally – Australia has now surpassed the US to be a world leader in podcast listening, with 43% of the population aged 12 and over having listened to a podcast in the past month.

Australia also has the third highest rate of news podcast listening, behind the US and Sweden, with 14% of news consumers listening to news podcasts in the past month.

Despite these trends, there’s been limited research on news podcast listening in Australia. My recent research, published in June, found news podcast listeners in Australia tend to be politically left-leaning, wealthier, and more highly educated than average.

In fact, new data from Roy Morgan shows podcasts are increasingly popular in Australia with over 3.9 million Australians now downloading audio or video podcasts in an average four weeks, up by a massive 456,000 (+13.1%) from a year ago.

This equates to almost one-in-five Australians (18.3%), up by 1.9% points from a year ago. Mobile phones and tablets are clearly the leading way to download podcasts used by 3.2 million Australians (15.2%) while around 1.1 million (5.2%) download podcasts via their computer – (2.1% use both).

An analysis by gender shows little difference with 1,983,000 men (18.8% of men) downloading podcasts compared to 1,952,000 women (17.9% of women) – both up more than 200,000 on a year ago.

All these growth figures have been reflected in Talking Architecture and Design (TAD), which now has completed a full 5th year (or Season 7) of podcasting, resulting to date 185 episodes and over 310,000 downloads – or on average just shy of 1700 downloads per episode.

A milestone worthy of both the content, and dedication shown by the TAD team. So, sit back and enjoy the listen!

Enjoy the listen and the read!