Tuesdata: Four guesses at how much podcast listening is actually occurring
Welcome to a Tuesday update from Unmade. In today’s data-led post for Unmade’s paying members, we share the specifics on competing data on podcast listening.
We’ve announced the schedule for this year’s Compass series. Our panel-in-the-pub, end-of-year tour kicks off in Sydney on November 3 and concludes in Hobart a fortnight later. Reflecting on 2025 and projecting into 2026, please hold the date for your city:
November 3 – Compass Sydney
November 5 – Compass Brisbane
November 10 – Compass Adelaide
November 11 – Compass Perth
November 17 – Compass Melbourne
November 18 – Compass Hobart
Unmade’s paying members get a free ticket to Compass. Your annual membership also gets you tickets to September’s REmade conference on retail media; and to October’s Unlock conference on marketing in the nighttime economy.
The coupon code for our annual paying members to access tickets to all those events is available below the paywall.
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How many people are actually listening to podcasts? Literally no one knows for sure, but here’s another guess
For a medium that was digital from the beginning, it’s frustrating how increasingly little we know about the true state of podcasting.
Today came the annual contribution from podcast production house Deadset Studios, with their annual tracker, PodPoll.
It’s one of at least five credible (and conflicting) data points - PodPoll; Roy Morgan Single Source; the Australian Communications & Media Authority, The Infinite Dial and The Australian Podcast Ranker.
And yet we don’t know a definite answer to the simple question: How many Australians are now listening to podcasts?
The most optimistic estimate is almost double that of the most pessimistic.