Australians’ voracious appetite for podcasts has been confirmed with the release of the December 2023 Australian Podcast Ranker, which revealed that Australians downloaded 1.03 billion podcasts in 2023, up 26% for the year.
The December Australian Podcast Ranker, which was released today by Commercial Radio & Audio (CRA) and Triton Digital, is a monthly snapshot of the top 200 podcasts listened to by Australians, the top 200 Australian podcasts, the biggest publishers and the most successful podcast sales representatives.
The five most popular podcasts in Australia for 2023 were:
Most popular podcasts
in Australia in 2023 |
Average monthly listeners |
| Hamish & Andy |
841,364 |
| Casefile True Crime |
813,514 |
| Mamamia Out Loud |
585,194 |
| Shameless |
574,599 |
| The Kyle & Jackie O Show |
529,073 |
“The Australian Podcast Ranker has confirmed that podcast listening is a passion shared by many Australians. There were over 1 billion podcast downloads in 2023. This equates to over 2.8 million downloads every day,” said Ford Ennals, CEO of CRA.
December, a quieter month for podcast listening as radio stars go on leave and fewer podcast episodes are produced by radio networks, saw monthly downloads increase 29% from December 2022. The top five podcasts for December 2023 were, in order: Casefile True Crime, Mamamia Out Loud, Hamish & Andy, Shameless and The Imperfects.
“It has been an incredible year for podcasts and the Australian Podcast Ranker, with eight new publishers coming on board in 2023, including the ABC in November, which assisted with the December year-on-year increase. Underlying it all is that podcasts are now part of many Australians’ everyday lives. We are the largest consumers of podcasts globally, with 43 per cent listening every month,” Mr Ennals said.
“Australian listeners are dedicated to home grown as well as the best of international content. Four out of the top five podcasts of 2023 and 15 out of the top 20 most popular podcasts in December were produced locally.”
The Australian Podcast Ranker analysis revealed the average Australian listener spent 2.3 hours a week listening to podcasts in 2023 and downloaded 3.95 podcasts a week.
“With 38 publishers from across Australia, the Australian Podcast Ranker, established in 2019, is the go-to place to discover what we are listening too. It’s the gold standard for advertisers to target dedicated listeners of quality podcast content,” Mr Ennals said.
“Listener commitment to local content creates jobs across the audio industry as well as unlocking opportunities for advertisers to reach audiences that are fully engaged with podcasts they loyally listen to, engage with emotionally, and trust.”
The top five publishers, which between them attracted over 12.5 million listeners in December, were ARN/iHeart, LiSTNR (SCA), the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, SiriusXM Podcast Network and Audioboom.
The top five most popular podcast genres in 2023 were Society and Culture with 4.07 million average monthly listeners, Comedy (3.95 million), True Crime (3.75 million), News (3.66 million) and Sports (2.71 million).
Thursday is the biggest day of the week to download or stream podcasts, and 8 am is the peak listening hour. Ninety-four per cent of all listening happens on a mobile device.
About the Australian Podcast Ranker
The Australian Podcast Ranker is an industry initiative commissioned by CRA and published by Triton Digital. Results comply with IAB Podcast Measurement Technical Guidelines. Annual Insights are based on results from January to December. The December 2023 Australian Podcast Ranker is available
here.
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