For our latest survey data about podcasts, read the “Podcasts and News Fact Sheet” here.

Although it’s much newer than other media like television or books, the podcast ecosystem has created a rich library of content covering a wide range of topics both popular and niche.

A new Pew Research Center study of 451 of the top-ranked podcasts in the United States shows this diversity of subjects: No single topic is the main focus of more than a quarter of these podcasts.

True crime is the most common topic, making up 24% of these top-ranked podcasts – perhaps reflecting the early popularity of Serial. The next most common topics are politics and government (10%); entertainment, pop culture and the arts (9%); and self-help and relationships (8%).

There are also a number of podcasts that don’t fit into any of these topics (12%), such as fictional radio stories and teams of people playing the role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons.

One-fifth of these top podcasts – which are those with the highest average daily rankings on Apple’s and Spotify’s lists of top podcasts in a six-month period in 2022 – discuss multiple topics. Many of these podcasts are like talk shows, with the discussion flowing across topics.

The list of top podcasts generally reflects the interests of U.S. listeners. Among the 49% of U.S. adults who said in a 2022 Center survey that they listened to a podcast in the last year, entertainment, politics, history and true crime were all among the most common topics these podcast listeners turned to.

To assess the presence of news in the podcast universe, researchers also looked at how many of the top-ranked podcasts are focused primarily on news and current events, finding that 15% of the podcasts studied fit this description.

News-focused podcasts can be about any topic, though most are about politics and government (49%) or sports (29%). Many have their roots in talk radio, and some, like The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz, are directly connected to radio shows.

Across topics, the most common format among news-focused podcasts is commentary (49%), while smaller shares – 22% each – are centered around deep reporting (podcasts that do in-depth examinations or analyses of a topic or story) or interviews. Just 6% are news summaries. Commentary is especially dominant among sports podcasts (82%).

News organizations have been investing in podcasts for several years, and some produce podcasts about news and other topics. They have had some success in this area: 18% of top-ranked podcasts are affiliated with one of several dozen news organizations, such as NPR, The Wall Street Journal or The Ringer. About half (51%) are affiliated with some other kind of organization, such as Wondery or iHeartRadio, and 31% of top podcasts have no affiliation (i.e., they are independent).

Current events likely come up on podcasts more frequently than these figures may suggest. Two-thirds of U.S. podcast listeners say news is discussed on the podcasts they listen to, according to a recent Center survey, and a similar share (64%) say they listen to podcasts to stay up to date about current events. This disconnect may be the result of podcast formats or other factors. For example, some podcasts might discuss news topics in passing, even if they do not focus on news exclusively. This analysis did not capture this type of news reference.

Podcasts are often viewed as a relatively easy way for anyone to tell a story. But actually getting an audience for that storytelling is more difficult, and podcast producers use several means to grow and connect with their audiences. Most of the top-ranked podcasts studied are available on four major listing sites – Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts and Stitcher – and roughly three-quarters have a website.

Some of these podcasts also experiment with other ways to engage their audiences. About half of top podcasts (51%) produce a video to accompany most episodes. Many of these videos show the podcast being recorded, providing a more engaging experience for viewers. And 8% have a discussion forum or Discord server, to directly engage with their fans or allow fans to connect with each other.

We studied 451 podcasts that had the highest average daily ranking on Apple and Spotify from April 1 to Sept. 30, 2022. This new report builds on the Center’s recent survey of U.S. podcast listeners to give context around what podcast audiences are listening to.

Other key findings from this analysis include:

• Top-ranked podcasts use a variety of formats: 38% feature deep reporting or explain a topic, roughly a quarter (23%) are interview shows, and 16% are based around commentary.
• True crime podcasts tend to feature deep reporting, while other topics use a more diverse set of formats. The vast majority of top true crime podcasts (95%) use deep reporting. In contrast, politics and government podcasts are roughly evenly split among interview (33%), deep reporting (28%) and commentary (28%) formats, while an additional 9% are news summaries.
• Most top-ranked podcasts have a single host. A majority of top podcasts (58%) feature a single host, while roughly four-in-ten (37%) have multiple hosts.
• Top-ranked podcasts tend to be less than an hour long. For six-in-ten top podcasts, the average episode length in 2022 was less than 50 minutes.
• Many top-ranked podcasts turn to their audiences for financial support. Around half of top podcasts (47%) ask for audience support through options such as subscriptions, donations or merchandise for sale. The Center’s recent survey of U.S. podcast listeners found that 13% have paid for a podcast subscription and 12% have bought merchandise.

While podcasts cover a broad range of topics, true crime is by far the most common topic of top-ranked podcasts.

About a quarter of top podcasts (24%) are primarily about true crime – often investigations into murders, scandals and other criminal acts. Many of these focus on a single crime across the series, such as The Execution of Bonny Lee Bakley, an in-depth investigation of Bakley’s murder and her connections to Hollywood celebrities (including her husband Robert Blake). Other top podcasts cover several crimes. For example, Morbid often spends one or two episodes on each incident.

The topics of top podcasts that follow true crime include politics and government (10%); entertainment, pop culture and the arts (9%); and self-help and relationships (8%).

Top-ranked podcasts about politics span across the ideological spectrum, from conservative-oriented podcasts like former Trump adviser Steve Bannon’s Bannon’s War Room to Pod Save America, a podcast hosted by several former Obama staffers.

Top-ranked entertainment podcasts, meanwhile, tend to cover specific areas of entertainment or pop culture, like The Official Game of Thrones Podcast, which offers listeners a behind-the-scenes view into the popular TV series, or Brain Structure, which is hosted by video game designer Hideo Kojima. But some entertainment podcasts are broader in scope, such as Vulture’s pop culture podcast Into It, hosted by Sam Sanders.

Self-help podcasts are about everything from personal finance (e.g., Dave Ramsey’s The Ramsey Show), to leadership (e.g., Dare to Lead with Brené Brown) or broader motivation (e.g., The Mindset Mentor).

Another 6% of top podcasts are about sports, while 4% focus on history.

One-in-five top-ranked podcasts focus on multiple topics. These tend to follow one of a few formats: In some, each episode is about a different topic, while in others the host(s) talk about a range of topics within the same episode, such as The Joe Rogan Experience or Suburb Talks.

Many of the topics that are common across these top podcasts are also among the most common topics named by U.S. podcast listeners. Roughly a third or more of U.S. podcast listeners regularly listen to podcasts about entertainment (46%), politics (41%), history (40%), true crime (34%) and self-help and relationships (32%).

Finding and maintaining an audience for a podcast can be challenging, so most podcasts make their content widely available. The vast majority of top-ranked podcasts studied are available on several major listing sites, with few podcasts exclusive to one site.

Nearly all top podcasts (99%) are available on Spotify, and roughly nine-in-ten top podcasts are available on Apple Podcasts (these two sites were used to determine podcast ranking). To see if these podcasts were also available on other listing sites, researchers then looked to see if each podcast was on Google Podcasts and Stitcher. Majorities of these top podcasts are also available on these other sites (90% and 82%, respectively), and 81% of the podcasts examined can be found on all four of these sites.

Among the top podcasts studied here, 7% are exclusive to Spotify, which has been experimenting with exclusive rights deals. Spotify has a $200 million partnership with Joe Rogan to bring The Joe Rogan Experience exclusively to the site, and it has purchased several podcast industry companies. At the same time, however, Spotify recently canceled several exclusive podcasts and relaxed its exclusivity rules for certain podcasts. Less than 1% of top podcasts are exclusive to Apple.

Podcasts originated as an audio-only form of media, but in recent years many podcasts have experimented with producing a video component, which may engage audiences in a different way. About half of top-ranked podcasts (51%) release some kind of video that accompanies their episodes, almost always on YouTube.

These videos take different forms. About three-in-ten top podcasts (29%) include video of the hosts recording the podcast itself. One example is Caresha Please, which, like some other podcasts, is recorded in an elaborate set, giving the podcast a unique visual brand. Spotify exclusive Call Her Daddy and Viall Files by Nick Viall, both of which are recorded in a studio, are other examples of this style.

One-in-five top podcasts have a video component that is a static (or mostly static) video. The SmartLess podcast is one example of this approach, with the podcast audio played over an image of the podcast’s logo and a simple soundwave animation.

Regardless of the format, YouTube is by far the most popular video-sharing platform for podcasts: The vast majority (97%) of podcasts with a video component make it available on YouTube. A small share of these podcasts use other sites, including 6% that use Rumble, the next most common site.

In addition to being available on major listing sites and video sharing sites, many podcasts use other methods to connect with their audiences. Roughly three-quarters of top-ranked podcasts have a website (73%). Podcasters use these websites to introduce their show, provide news and other updates to their audiences, share links to listing sites that host their show, and offer merchandise for sale.

Additionally, 8% of top podcasts have some kind of online discussion forum where their audiences can connect with each other, or even with the creators directly. For example, the true crime podcast Murder, Mystery & Makeup has a Discord server with about 27,000 members at the time this report was written.

A popular perception of podcasting suggests that anyone can start a podcast, enabling independent voices to reach large audiences. But running a podcast and getting an audience can be both time-consuming and expensive, with costs relating to equipment as well as advertising, guest booking, research and other expenses. Top-ranked podcasts often make money from advertising (although this study did not examine this revenue stream), and many ask their audiences for financial support.

But affiliation with a larger organization – a podcasting network or company or a news organization – can mitigate these costs, though funding levels may be declining. In fact, a majority of top podcasts (69%) are connected to a larger organization that produces and distributes podcasts, including about one-in-five (18%) that are affiliated with news organizations. Some of these are news-focused podcasts like The New York Times’ The Daily and The Daily Wire’s The Ben Shapiro Show, but others are not, such as Making Space with Hoda Kotb from NBC.

About half of all top podcasts (51%) are affiliated with an organization that is not primarily focused on news. Many of these organizations are focused on podcasts and related content, such as Pushkin Industries, Lemonada Media or Barstool Sports. But recent years also have seen a wave of consolidation in the podcast industry, with several podcasts and their parent companies being purchased by larger organizations. For example, Wondery, which publishes dozens of podcasts, was purchased by Amazon in 2020, while Spotify bought The Ringer’s catalog of podcasts the same year. And more traditional audio companies like iHeartMedia also publish several top podcasts.

About a third of top-ranked podcasts (31%) are independent. These include podcasts from relatively unknown hosts, such as Your Own Backyard (which investigates the 1996 disappearance of Kristin Smart), as well as from public figures (e.g., The Megyn Kelly Show).

About half of top-ranked podcasts seek financial support from listeners

About half of top podcasts (47%) seek out audience support, either by offering paid subscriptions, asking for donations or selling merchandise.

Roughly three-in-ten (31%) invite their audience to buy a paid subscription to their podcast, which offers listeners added benefits like early access or bonus episodes. A similar proportion (30%) sell merchandise, such as T-shirts and coffee mugs. Just 5% ask listeners directly for donations.

A recent Pew Research Center survey found that 13% of podcast listeners in the U.S. have paid for a subscription to a podcast, and 12% have bought a podcast’s merchandise.

Independent podcasts are more likely to seek out audience support than those connected to a larger organization

Whether top-ranked podcasts ask listeners for support also varies based on their ownership, with independent podcasts particularly likely to ask for support.

Six-in-ten independent top-ranked podcasts ask listeners for support through paid subscriptions, direct donations or selling merchandise, compared with 41% of podcasts affiliated with a larger organization.

Independent podcasts are about twice as likely to offer a paid subscription as podcasts affiliated with an organization (47% vs. 23%). Similarly, independent podcasts are more likely to sell merchandise, with 42% offering this option to listeners (versus 24% of those with an affiliation).

One-in-ten independent top-ranked podcasts seek donations, versus just 2% of those affiliated with a larger organization.

Podcast hosts use a mix of formats and structures to tell stories, convey information and hold discussions. These approaches differ in a number of ways, including the number of hosts and the overall format – such as an interview-based show vs. one centered around reporting or commentary – as well as the frequency and length of episodes.

Roughly four-in-ten top-ranked podcasts (38%) use deep reporting, in which the podcast does an in-depth examination or analysis of a topic or story. Some that follow this format include true crime podcasts such as Small Town Murder and My Favorite Murder, in which the hosts break down evidence about different crimes, and History is US, a podcast that focuses on race and American history.

Other common formats include those in which the host or hosts interview a guest or group of guests every episode (23%), and those in which hosts offer their commentary on a given subject (16%). A small share of the podcasts examined involve hosts giving a recap of episodes of TV shows or other media (4%), such as the Always Sunny Podcast or Office Ladies, and 1% are news summaries.

About one-in-five top podcasts (18%) use another type of format, such as soundscapes or a team playing through a Dungeons & Dragons campaign.

Some podcast topics are more likely to be tied to specific formats than others. For example, the vast majority of true crime podcasts (95%) use the deep reporting format.

Politics and government podcasts, however, are about evenly split among interview (33%), deep reporting (28%) and commentary (28%) formats, with an additional 9% that are news summaries. Recaps are the most common format among entertainment podcasts (36%), while most sports podcasts (82%) use the commentary format.

Top-ranked podcasts most often have a single host

A slim majority of top podcasts feature a single host (58%), though the host often is joined by guests. For example, In the Bubble with Andy Slavitt is hosted by Slavitt, but he is regularly joined by guests. A smaller share of top podcasts feature multiple hosts (37%) – such as Adulting, which is hosted by Michelle Buteau and Jordan Carlos. And 6% of top podcasts do not have a host; these are often fiction podcasts that have a narrator or a cast of voice actors, like Batman Unburied.

Podcasts about true crime and politics and government are especially likely to have a single host (67% and 63% do, respectively), while most sports podcasts have more than one host (71%), reflecting their roots in sports talk radio.

The number of hosts top podcasts have also differs by the overall format of the show. Top podcasts that use a deep reporting (65%) or interview (78%) structure are much more likely than commentary (35%) or recap (25%) podcasts to have a single host.

Of U.S. podcast listeners who named a top podcast in a recent Pew Research Center survey, about a quarter (27%) say they feel extremely or very connected to that podcast’s host or hosts.

Most podcasts’ episodes average less than an hour in length

Most podcasts are not quick listens – but relatively few are significantly longer than an hour per episode.

Just 6% of top-ranked podcasts averaged less than 20 minutes per episode in 2022, while just over half (54%) were longer than 20 minutes but less than 50 minutes. About four-in-ten top podcasts (37%) averaged about an hour or more per episode, including 18% that averaged more than 70 minutes.¹

Top podcasts on certain topics tend to have longer episodes than others. For example, about a quarter or more of top podcasts about sports (36%) or entertainment and the arts (29%) averaged at least 70 minutes in length during the six months studied, larger shares than for other topic categories studied.

Podcasts that release videos are also longer than others, on average. Roughly a quarter (28%) of podcasts with videos released alongside an episode averaged 70 minutes or more between April and September of 2022, compared with just 8% of podcasts without video.

How frequently podcasts release episodes

Of the 451 top-ranked podcasts included in this analysis, most (61%) released episodes at least once a week during the study period, including about a quarter that released multiple episodes per week.

Top podcasts that focus on sports are the most likely to release more than one episode per week (57%).

The vast majority of top-ranked podcasts do not focus primarily on news and current events: 15% of the podcasts examined in this study are focused on news. That said, news is a common part of the podcast experience for the majority of listeners – two-thirds of U.S. podcast listeners said in the 2022 survey that they had heard news discussed on podcasts in the last year.

There are several possible reasons for this, including that many podcasts that do not primarily focus on the news occasionally discuss news-related topics.

News-focused podcasts can be about a range of topics, including sports, entertainment and politics. Still, about half of these news-focused podcasts (49%) are about politics and government. These include podcasts like The Dan Bongino Show and The Kyle Kulinski Show, both of which feature commentary on daily political news.

At 29%, sports also is a common topic among news-focused podcasts, with podcasts from sports commentators such as The Bill Simmons Podcast, as well as some from athletes themselves, like The Draymond Green Show. 

A substantial share of news-focused top podcasts (13%) are about multiple topics. These podcasts tend to cover different topics across their episodes, including The Ezra Klein Show and All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg.

Nearly one-in-five top-ranked podcasts are affiliated with a news organization

Another connection between podcasts and the news can come in the form of an affiliation with a news organization. About one-in-five top-ranked podcasts (18%) have this type of affiliation, including podcasts associated with NPR, The Wall Street Journal and The Ringer.

Not all podcasts published by news organizations are focused on news, but podcasts that do focus on news are more likely than other podcasts to be affiliated with news organizations (46% vs. 13%).

Podcasts about certain topics are more likely to have an affiliation with a news organization. Just under half of top podcasts focused on politics and government (44%) are affiliated with news organizations, as are 36% of those focused on sports. Self-help (8%) and entertainment (7%) podcasts are less likely to be connected to news organizations.

A recent Center survey found that 20% of podcast listeners say any of the podcasts they listen to are connected to a news organization – similar to the 18% of top podcasts with such a connection – but there also is also some uncertainty among listeners. Roughly the same percentage (21%) say they do not know whether the podcasts they listen to are connected to a news organization.

News-focused podcasts are far more likely than others to be structured around commentary

About half of top-ranked podcasts that focus on news (49%) are structured around commentary. These podcasts feature a host or hosts providing their analysis and opinion on current events, such as podcasts about politics like the Candace Owens podcast and sports podcasts like Slow News Day with Kevin Clark.

The next most common formats are deep reporting and interviews, which are each featured in 22% of news-focused top podcasts.

By contrast, the deep reporting format is the most common format for podcasts that are not about news (40%), followed by interview-centric podcasts at 23%. Commentary podcasts make up just 10% of podcasts that do not focus on news.

In addition, 63% of all news-focused top podcasts have a video component, making this more common than among other top-ranked podcasts (49%).

News podcasts tend to be longer, published more frequently than others

Overall, news-focused podcasts tend to be slightly longer than other top-ranked podcasts. About half of news-focused podcasts (49%) are about an hour or longer, compared with 35% of top-ranked podcasts that do not focus on news.

Podcasts that focus on news also tend to be produced more frequently. Roughly half of news-focused podcasts (54%) released episodes more than once a week on average during the study period, far greater than the share of podcasts that are not focused on news (15%). This includes 16% of news-focused podcasts that were released daily, compared with just 4% of other podcasts.

Top podcasts that do not focus on news were released less frequently: 83% were released weekly or less frequently in 2022, compared with 38% of news-focused podcasts.

Pew Research Center is a subsidiary of The Pew Charitable Trusts, its primary funder. This is the latest report in Pew Research Center’s ongoing investigation of the state of news, information and journalism in the digital age, a research program funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts, with generous support from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. This report is a collaborative effort based on the input and analysis of the Center’s news and information research team, communications, design, digital and editorial teams. Find related reports online at journalism.org.

Research Team

Galen Stocking, Senior Computational Social Scientist
Katerina Eva Matsa, Director, News and Information Research
Sarah Naseer, Research Assistant
Christopher St. Aubin, Research Assistant
Elisa Shearer, Senior Researcher
Mark Jurkowitz, Senior Writer
Shreenita Ghosh, Former Research Associate
Jacob Liedke, Research Assistant
Naomi Forman-Katz, Research Assistant
Emily Tomasik, Research Assistant  
Jeffrey Gottfried, Senior Researcher

Communications and Web Publishing

Sogand Afkari, Communications Manager
Andrew Grant, Communications Associate
Rachel Drian, Associate Director, Communications  
Sara Atske, Associate Digital Producer

Editorial and Graphic Design

Michael Lipka, Editorial Manager, Religion Research
David Kent, Senior Copy Editor       
Peter Bell, Design Director
Andrea Caumont, Digital Engagement Manager
Isaac Mei, Associate Social Media Strategist
Chris Baronavski, Senior Web Developer

Names of the 451 top-ranked podcasts included in this report

This study takes a close look at key characteristics of podcasts. It is a part of Pew Research Center’s examination of the role of podcasts in the news and information environment in the U.S.

Researchers conducted an audit of 451 “top-ranked podcasts,” which are English-language podcasts that appeared on top podcast charts regularly in the U.S. between April 1 and Sept. 30, 2022. This analysis looked at several key podcast characteristics, including podcast topic, format and availability.

This is the latest report in Pew Research Center’s ongoing investigation of the state of news, information and journalism in the digital age, a research program funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts, with generous support from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

Podcast selection

Researchers determined which podcasts were top ranked through an analysis of daily chart data from Apple Podcasts and Spotify for the period April 1 through Sept. 30, 2022. Apple and Spotify podcast chart data provided by Podchaser, Inc. This daily chart data showed the top 200 podcasts on each site for each day during this period.

For each podcast, researchers calculated the average chart ranking during this period (excluding days on which a podcast was not in the top 200). Podcasts that appeared on the charts for fewer than seven days during this period were removed to ensure that this dataset did not include podcasts that were only popular for a short time.

Once the average chart position for each podcast was calculated, researchers identified the top 300 English-language podcasts on Apple Podcasts and the top 300 English-language podcasts on Spotify. These two lists were then combined, with researchers taking steps to ensure podcasts that were in the top 300 podcasts on both platforms were not included twice. Researchers performed this de-duplication through both a computational approach based on the podcast name and a manual review. After this process, the final sample was 451 podcasts.

Content analysis of top-ranked podcasts

Once the sample was drawn, a team of coders was trained on a set of variables that analyzed key characteristics of each podcast. This content analysis was conducted from Feb. 9 to April 21, 2023. Coders first examined the site where the podcast appeared on the top charts. They then conducted an internet search for each podcast in order to find its website and its listing on any of the four major podcast listing sites studied here: Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts and Stitcher. Information used to code the podcasts predominantly came from the podcast’s website, when available; from each podcast’s description on these listing sites; and from listening to portions of each podcast. For the last component, researchers listened to the first 2-5 minutes and last 2-5 minutes (excluding any time used for advertisements) of at least two and as many as five of the most recent episodes for each podcast.  

Inter-rater reliability (IRR) was tested using Krippendorff’s alpha on all variables that required judgement on the part of the coder.

Below are the main measures and their alphas:

• News focus (0.758)
• Affiliation (0.722)
• News media affiliation (0.910)
• Main topic (0.768)
• Format (0.798)
• Host structure (0.805)
• Video type (average: 0.733)
• Paid subscription (average: 0.672, min: 0.469)
• Merchandise (0.644)

Podcast episode data

Frequency and duration were determined by examining the collection of all episodes published by these top-ranked podcasts in all of 2022 (including dates outside the April-September range used for selection). Researchers used a custom python script to collect metadata on each episode from the Apple Podcasts and Spotify APIs, depending on where the podcast was available.

To calculate duration, researchers averaged the length of all podcast episodes published by these podcasts during 2022. Each podcast was then categorized as generally producing episodes in 2022 that were on average less than 20 minutes, at least 20 minutes but less than about an hour (or 20-49 minutes), about an hour (50-70 minutes), or significantly longer than an hour (70+ minutes).

To calculate frequency, researchers divided the number of episodes produced in 2022 by the number of days between the publication dates of the first and last episodes published in 2022 (e.g., if a podcast’s first 2022 episode was published on June 1, and the last one on June 30, the number of days for that season was 30). This was done to treat podcasts that produce seasons with a limited number of episodes the same as podcasts that run throughout the year – otherwise, every podcast with a season would have an artificially low frequency. Podcasts were then categorized according to this frequency.

Podcasts that did not produce any episodes during 2022 (but still were in the top 200 charts during the analysis period) or that did not have any available episodes at collection time were not included in this part of the analysis. Fourteen podcasts did not produce any episodes during this time period, so a resulting total of 437 podcasts were analyzed for frequency and duration.