Australians’ appetite for podcasts has been confirmed with the release of the December 2023 Australian Podcast Ranker.
The Triton Digital ranking, released by CRA, reveals that Australians downloaded 1.03 billion podcasts in 2023, up 26% for the year.
The annual data coincides with the release of the December 2023 Podcast ranker. The top five podcasts for December 2023 were, in order: Casefile True Crime, Mamamia Out Loud, Hamish & Andy, Shameless and The Imperfects.
As well as taking a spot in the top 5 for December, Hamish and Andy re-entered the chart with their annual Hamish & Andy’s Remembering Project at #16 on the Australian chart.
Highest new entry was Everybody Has a Secret (Shameless Media) from host Annabelle Lee which is at #31.
The five most popular podcasts in Australia for 2023 were:
“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.
“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.
“Australian listeners are dedicated to homegrown 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.”
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Open in new tab 2023 time spent listening
The Australian Podcast Ranker analysis reveals the average Australian listener spent 2.3 hours a week listening to podcasts in 2023 and downloaded 3.95 podcasts a week.
Top 5 podcast publishers
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.
For the December chart, ARN’s iHeart highlighted the performance of its top podcasts, with four of them securing positions in the coveted top 10. The Imperfects climbed two spots to #5 overall (#1 health & wellness), Life Uncut with Brittany Hockley and Laura Byrne ascended 1 spot to #7 overall (#1 relationship) and Stuff You Should Know climbed an impressive 5 spots to #8 overall (#1 Knowledge).
LiSTNR reported several of its podcasts were big movers in the December Ranker, including CommSec Market Update which jumped 34 places in the Top 200, Willow Talk Cricket Podcast was up 25 places, Chat 10 Looks 3 up 25 places, Motley Fool Money up 15 places and Grade Cricketer up 11 places.
Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps made its debut on the Top 200 ranker.
See also: Podcast Ranker November 2023 – Hamish & Andy have Xmas #1, ABC titles flood the chart