Reports: Audio

Browse all of our reports, featuring our analysts' expert insights and analysis of audience segmentation, emerging trends and technologies, value chains, market shares, predictions and more – backed by our proprietary survey data and bespoke models & forecasts. Become a subscriber to get new ones every month, or just pick one to get started.

The future of creator apps
Fuelling engagement with fandom

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Ben Woods

July 2025

Creators

Spotify

Artists

The AI boom has unleashed a wave of creator tools, but some are struggling to make the transition from interesting and experimental to compulsive and essential. Fandom offers a solution by tying creation to a consumer’s personal passion, appetite for community engagement and a desire to have a stake in the entertainment they love.

2024 audio consumer profile
Habits, platforms, and personas

Laura Fisher

May 2025

Apple

Spotify

YouTube

This report presents MIDiA’s audio consumer survey data with a view to understand the global audio consumer.This report is a compilation of the most recent MIDiA audio data. Key data in this report: Platforms that podcast monthly listeners use to access their podcasts, Q4 2024, global Podcast monthly listeners main ways of discovering podcasts, Q...

UK media consumption Q4 2024
A mature market with niche growth prospects

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Laura Fisher

April 2025

Streaming

Streaming Music

US

This report presents MIDiA consumer entertainment data across media, music, audio, and games. Key data and insights: Time spent and weekly active users (by format and platform)for streaming music, podcasts, social media, games consoles and more. All data refers to the UK only (n = 1,000) except for ‘all-country average’ referring to the weighte...

Podcasts as a key information source
Implications for media companies

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Rutger Rosenborg

April 2025

Media

Podcasts

Audience Insight

Podcasts have begun to rival traditional media as a key source of news and political information for podcast listeners, especially among millennials and Gen Z. To stay relevant, traditional media must innovate, while podcast companies can solidify their dominance.

The audio creator opportunity
Audio creator behaviours and monetisation potential

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Rutger Rosenborg

March 2025

Creators

Subscriptions

Spotify

Historically, YouTubers and TikTok influencers have received the lion’s share of mainstream attention as a creator class – but audio creators are increasingly active on the same digital platforms and operating within the same formats. As a result, the audio creator has become a jack of all trades, moving between copyediting, audio editing, and ...

Audio’s entertainment value
Examining audio listeners’ cross-entertainment lives

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Rutger Rosenborg

February 2025

music industry

Music streaming

Content

Typically, the marketing team for a games company or TV show would not be thinking of audiobooks and podcast listeners as a key consumer segment to address. Yet, podcast and audiobook listeners are digitally sophisticated and spend more time and money than the consumer average on most forms of entertainment – including games, music, and video.

Before and after podcasts
Mapping the podcast listener journey

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Rutger Rosenborg

January 2025

US

UK

France

The global importance of video for podcasting extends into the unique market dynamics of the US, UK, France, Mexico, and Japan. Not only does this justify Spotify’s strategic video push, but it also indicates a need for other platforms to follow suit.

Visionary audio
Unlocking the power of video in podcasting

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Rutger Rosenborg

November 2024

brand partnerships

spotify podcasts

podcast creators

YouTube may be the only viable platform for long-form video podcasts, but that does not mean audio-first podcast platforms should abandon video. Instead, podcast platforms should leverage video both as a podcast format and as a marketing driver to increase podcast discovery and consumption.

Socioeconomics of podcast listening
Engaging a higher value audience

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Rutger Rosenborg

October 2024

Creators

Subscriptions

Radio

Podcasts alone will struggle to monetise via subscriptions, leaving advertising as podcasts’ key source of revenue for the foreseeable future. However, podcasts do attract high-earning, high-spending audiences, which are often hard to reach with conventional advertising.

From casual listeners to podcast purists
Mapping podcast platform preferences

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Rutger Rosenborg

September 2024

Audience Insight

Consolidation has arrived in audio. As some tech companies turn to a multi-format strategy to keep users engaged, it becomes more difficult for single-format platforms to compete for the same subscriber base. Companies sticking to the single-format vision of podcasting run the risk of losing even more market share to YouTube and Spotify, but there ...

Audio psychographics
Understanding why people listen

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Rutger Rosenborg

July 2024

Audience Insight

With so much content competing for consumers' attention, it is not enough to just give them ways to spend their limited resources (time and money). Audio companies must also give consumers reasons to do so. Therefore, to grow the audio market, knowing the reasons consumers choose one format over another is key to driving audience strategy, product ...

Defining podcast taste
The universal appeal of music, news, and comedy

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Rutger Rosenborg

June 2024

Business Strategy

While the epicentre of podcasting revenue is in the West, the listener base has become truly global. According to MIDiA’s podcast forecasts, Asia Pacific already accounts for three times as many podcast listeners as all of North America, and that number will only continue to grow.

MIDiA Research 2024–2030 global podcast forecasts
Road to a $10 billion business

Cover image for MIDiA Research 2024–2030 global podcast forecasts

Mark Qi and Rutger Rosenborg

March 2024

Business Strategy

The temporary digital consumption boom of the pandemic gave way to an inflationary landscape fuelled by global supply chain issues and geopolitical crises. While inflation levelled out in 2023, the residual effects of post-pandemic economics continued to reverberate throughout media and tech.

Audiobook consumer profile
A focused, engaged niche

Kazia Rothwell

February 2024

Audience Insight

Key data and insights included in this report: Audiobook user snapshot, behaviours and demographics compared to the average consumer Change in time spent and listenership of audiobooks compared to other audio streams Audio behaviours, including multitasking, background and focused listening, time of day and location of listening Year-on-year analys...

Audio substitute threat
Measuring consumer time allocation

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Rutger Rosenborg

February 2024

Streaming

cannibalization

Radio

All forms of entertainment compete not only for the same time, but increasingly for the same digital real estate. As audio streaming platforms move towards all-in-one access to multiple formats, both platforms and content providers must understand the threats of substitution and cannibalisation from within.

Radio future vision
Build the new and transform the old

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Annie Langston

October 2023

Business Strategy

Despite extensive efforts by radio broadcasters to redress the digital shift with offerings like podcasts and streaming apps, radio’s audience continues to fall. The fundamental question is: how does radio attract younger audiences that have never been radio natives? Ultimately, radio must act, and fast.

Music’s podcast potential
Focus on branding over discovery

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Annie Langston

August 2023

Labels

Streaming

Artists

In this hyper-fragmented entertainment consumption space, artists and labels must use every tool available to break out above the noise. Artists must diversify their content to not only promote their music, but to develop their personal brand. Podcasts are an effective vessel to target niche audiences and build a brand, both within and outside of m...

Radio WAUs
Blurring broadcast lines

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Annie Langston

July 2023

Spotify

Radio

iHeart

The radio industry has traditionally thought in terms of monthly audiences and reach rather than engagement. It is time for the radio industry to start thinking in terms of weekly engagement so that it can better benchmark itself against the wider picture of digital entertainment It is time for radio to think in terms of weekly active users (WAUs) ...

US SVOD consumer podcast engagement
Audio is the new spinoff

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Annie Langston

June 2023

Apple

Apple

Spotify

As consumer attention fragments across platforms and content types, it is increasingly important for both streaming subscription video services and podcast creators to maximise their content reach. For streaming subscription video on demand (SVOD) services, podcasts provide new opportunities to reach and retain audiences.

Podcasts and gamers
How audio can propel the gaming universe

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Annie Langston and Kazia Rothwell

May 2023

Spotify

Spotify

YouTube

The rise of games-inspired content is taking entertainment by storm. This illustrates the power of not only games content itself, but the fandoms that keep it alive, revealing an audience for other entertainment formats to tap into. As games aficionados over-index for a variety of podcasting behaviours, podcasts are an opportunity for games compani...

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Showing 1 to 20 of 42 results.