Five million new Canadian Adults have become monthly podcast listeners since 2019, according to the 2024 Canadian Podcast Listener survey.
This year’s report, from Signal Hill Insights and Ulster Media, indicates that monthly podcast listening among Canadian adults, 18+, is up three points year-over-year, following two years of minor increases in 2022 and 2023. Daily listening is up from 7% to 8.8%, the largest increase since the study began in 2017.
“In the past five years, we’ve seen the incidence of monthly podcast listening in Canada rise from 26% of Canadian adults to 39%,” said Matt Hird, Senior Research Director, Signal Hill Insights, in a release. “Combine that with the population surge, and there are 5.1 million more monthly podcast listeners in Canada now than there were just before we headed into the COVID-19 pandemic.”
According to the survey, Canadian podcast listeners continue to reflect a younger, higher-educated and more affluent audience, with the majority aged 18-34, university-educated and from households with an annual income in excess of $100K.
YouTube surges as most-listened to platform
YouTube has surged as the preferred platform to consume podcasts, moving from 29% to 35% year-over-year. Spotify lost listeners, dropping from a high of 31% in 2023 to 28% this year. Apple Podcasts’ losses were more moderate, dropping from 16% to 15% of listeners, who cited the platform as the one used most often.
This year’s study found that in-app discovery is becoming more relevant for new podcasts, making a one-point year-over-year gain to 26%. Discovery via another podcast also made gains, rising from 11 to 14% year-over-year.
By genre, Comedy ranked high with both men (43%) and women (36%), followed by Society & Culture (32% women vs. 22% men). From there, genre is skewed heavily by gender, including True Crime (22% women vs 10% men), News (25% men vs. 16% women), and Sports – which accounts for the largest gender gap (22% men vs. 8% women).
The Canadian Podcast Listener found that listening in French-speaking Canada was lower in 2024, with a four per cent decline in monthly listeners, breaking a three-year growth trend. However, the average number of episodes and time spent listening were up with Francophones, from 4.6 hours per week to six.
Survey respondents were also asked about ad repetition, with the study finding that the number of ads are increasingly tiring to podcast listeners, rising from 61% to 63% year-over-year.
