Podcast genres are very diverse ranging from music, comedy, religion, sport, news, politics, and current affairs. In this report, the authors focus mainly on news, politics, and current affairs podcasts.

The aim of the report is to examine Australians’ podcast listening habits and trends in comparison with other countries and to identify key industry issues.

Part 1 of the report is an analysis of data from 40 countries surveyed in the Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2020.

In Part 2, nine expert contributions from around the globe representing Asia, Africa, Europe, the Americas, and Oceania are presented.

Key findings:

• In Australia, podcast listening has increased from 27% in 2019 to 32% in 2020 but is still at the lower end in the global market. The global average is 41%.
• Specialist podcasts are the most popular among Australian news consumers (15%), followed by lifestyle (12%), news (11%), contemporary life (11%), and sport (7%).
• The top reason for Australian podcast listeners to use podcasts is to get a diverse range of perspectives (60%).
• Highly educated news consumers are more likely to listen news podcast in English speaking countries. This trend is more prominent in the US with 26% of those who are highly educated listening to news podcasts compared to 14% of those who had less education.