Research firm Nielsen has released its Q3 report on American consumers’ listening habits.
The topline figures:
On average, Americans listen to three hours and 53 minutes of audio daily across both ad supported and ad free platforms.
This includes radio, podcasts, streaming music services and satellite radio.
In Q3 2025, ad supported audio accounted for 64% of all listening.
Ad supported:
Of those ad supported listeners, 62% of their daily time was spent listening to the radio, 20% on podcasts, 15% on streaming music and 3% with satellite radio.
As Music Ally points out, however, research firm eMarketer analyzed those stats further to reveal that radio’s share dropped by five percentage points YoY, while streaming’s share grew by 36.4% YoY.
This was particularly true for 18-34 year olds, for whom ad-supported music streaming accounts for 24% of their daily listening.
