Comedy remained the most popular podcast genre in the US for Q3 2022, according to a quarterly report conducted by polling company Edison Research.
19 podcast genres in total were ranked by audience size as part of the Edison Research Top Podcast Genres report. The data is based on over 11,600 weekly podcast listeners aged 18 and up from Q4 2021 to Q3 2022, polled by audience research tool Edison Podcast Metrics.
Society & Culture moved up as the second-most popular podcast genre, replacing news podcasts. The latter was pushed down to third place with True Crime, Sports, Business, and Arts following behind in the same order as the previous quarter.
History made it to the top 10 genres list in Q3 last year, as it moved up from its 11th ranking to the eighth. Religion & Spirituality also moved up to the ninth spot, switching its place with Education.
The dataset that the report is based on, Edison Podcast Metrics, covers the entirety of the US podcast industry and regularly surveys weekly podcast listenership to track consumption behaviours, content preferences, demographics, and other measures.
Edison Research previously released its fourth annual Spoken Word Audio Report in October 2022, made in collaboration with non-profit organisation NPR, which looked at the consumption behaviours of podcast listeners in the US and focused on Gen Z groups.
The report also revealed that comedy was the most popular podcast genre across all age groups but differed in that News was ranked second for listeners aged 25+, while Society & Culture and True Crime were more popular with Gen Zs.
According to Spotify’s Podcast Trends report released in December 2022, Health & Fitness is the fastest-growing podcast category in the US, UK, Australia, and France, with a collective increase of 712% in time spent listening year-on-year.
“Listeners in many countries appear to be interested in bettering themselves either physically or mentally, showing increased listenership across genres like Health & Fitness and Religion & Spirituality,” the report stated.
