Australians downloaded 755 million podcasts in 2022, with health and fitness and true crime the fastest growing genres, according to annual insights from the Australian Podcast Ranker, released today by Commercial Radio Australia and Triton Digital.

Casefile True Crime was the ranker’s most popular podcast of the year with 868,283 average monthly listeners followed by Hamish & Andy (856,311).  The top five was rounded out by Mamamia Out Loud (562,289), The Kyle and Jackie O Show (465,836) and Life Uncut with Brittany Hockley and Laura Byrne (453,304).

The best performing debut podcast of the year was “Liar Liar: Melissa Caddick and the Missing Millions”, a highly anticipated true crime series that launched in April with 343,633 listeners that month. 

The top six podcasts based on average monthly listeners were all Australian made.  Total downloads among participating publishers increased by 39% over the year before, with Mamamia and SBS among the new publishers joining the ranker in 2022.  

Comedy was once again the most popular category based on downloads, accounting for 152.56 million during the year, up 26%, followed by news with 118.24 million downloads, up 18%.  Health and fitness and true crime were the fastest growing categories, up by 67% to 37.44 million and 45% to 113.20 million respectively.

Between January and November 2022, the average listener downloaded 4.3 podcasts and listened to 2.46 hours of content each week. 

Thursday was the most popular day of the week to stream or download podcasts and the top listening hour was 8am.  Smartphones and tablets were the devices used for 96% of all downloads.

CRA chief executive officer Ford Ennals said: “The Australian Podcast Ranker goes from strength to strength as the definitive view of the performance of podcasts in Australia. It’s clear from the massive growth in podcast listening in 2022 that Australia’s love affair with podcasts continues and that, unlike so many other countries in the world, the most popular podcasts in Australia are local made Australian podcasts.”

Richard Palmer, Director of Market Development, APAC, Triton Digital, said: “Australians continue to be one of the largest populations of podcast listeners in the world, with downloads continuing to increase by a steady rate. With the increase in interest, our rankers continue to provide the accurate insights into monthly performance trends Australians rely on.”

The Australian Podcast Ranker, commissioned by Commercial Radio & Audio and produced by Triton Digital, reports on the most popular podcasts consumed in Australia across all platforms and apps and is in reported in accordance with IAB Tech Lab’s Podcast Measurement Guidelines.

Participating publishers in the ranker include Audioboom, ARN’s iHeartPodcast Network Australia, DM Podcasts, Equity Mates Media, LiSTNR (SCA), Mamamia, Motorsport Podcast Network, News Corp Australia, Nine, NOVA Entertainment, Podshape, Schwartz Media, SBS, Sports Entertainment Network (SEN), Stitcher, Studio71, Wondery, The Chaser and West Australian Newspapers.

The latest monthly Australian Podcast Ranker is available here.