Radio, not podcasts, rules the car: Edison Research

31 July 2023 · News · Podcastinfo

Edison Research’s Share of Ear survey measures what people listen to, for how long and where. They’ve taken a closer look at podcasting’s share of all listening by location in the US for all populations 13+ and the results are interesting.

The below graph shows a breakdown of all listening by location.

Podcasts are more than 10% of listening time in every location except for the car.

This would suggest that there’s incredible room for growth here for podcasts, but perhaps there’s more at play.

June’s Infinite Dial Australia report showed that we are bigger consumers of podcasts than the US with the breakdown of car audio listening from those surveyed over the course of a month showing 84% AM/FM/DAB+, 41% music streaming services, 38% podcasts and 20% online AM/FM stations.

Again this indicates Australians, who the report showed 43% of listen to podcasts every month, are also preferring to tune in at home, work, doing chores and generally outside of the car.

Radio rules in the car for a couple of obvious reasons:

My partner listens to podcasts every work trip. If I get in the car with him between times he stops where he is up to. Many times, he’s accidentally muted it and then had to go back and find his place later.

My son has just got his Ps (that’s a whole other article). He’s bought a 20 year old Holden that still has a cigarette lighter instead of a USB slot. He can only listen to radio (or the six stacker CD player the car also features). Many who have older vehicles can’t listen to a podcast even if they want to.

I would imagine that podcast listening is far higher for those who take public transport to and from work, which would also make for an interesting survey, as would of people whose individual car trips are longer than 45 minutes, where they may have time to listen to the news and a whole podcast episode.

Tags: Edison Research | Infinite Dial Australia | Podcasts | Radio | Share of Ear

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"My son has...a 20 year old Holden that still has a cigarette lighter instead of a USB slot. ...Many who have older vehicles can’t listen to a podcast even if they want to...."

I had a 20-year-old Holden with an AM/FM receiver and cassette player on a standard single DIN .

In addition the unit had a 3.5mm audio socket to accept audio from external sources such as a mobile phone.

The mobile phone may have space on the micro sd with recorded podcasts.

Connect a lead from the mobile phone's earpiece to the car unit's 3.5mm audio socket.

Play the podcast from the mobile phone to the car's receiver.

Alternatively copy the podcast and burn it as an audio CD, open the stacker and place the burned CD.

Don't copy the mp3 file to CD rom as it is likely that the stacker is likely not to play mp3 files. Therefore the podcast must be converted toan audio CD format

Yes it is complicated but not impossible.

Therefore I would settle for the 3.5mm lead from the mobile phone to the car's unit.

In conclusion, for cars without a usb connected it may still be possible to play podcasts in a car's radio unit especially of the unit has a 3.5mm jack and can be connected to the mobile phone OR even an "ipod" type mp3/wav/ogg player with a 3.5mm/headphone outlet.

Thank youAnthony, Strathfield South, in the land of the Wangal and Darug Peoples of the Eora Nation

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