Radio and podcast listening has surged, the Infinite Dial annual report has found

Younger Australians are hooked on their smartphones and increasingly turning to radio and podcasts, the results of a study show.

Younger Australians are embracing listening to the radio on their smartphones.

Younger Australians hooked on their smartphones have helped fuel a surge in people consuming radio content while on the go.

The annual Infinite Dial Australia report, conducted by Edison Research in conjunction with industry body Commercial Radio & Audio, found online ­listening for adults aged 25–54 nearly doubled since 2021, climbing from 15 per cent to 31 per cent over the past three years.

Edison Research president Larry Rosin said the national survey of 1719 respondents showed Australians had changed their listening habits, largely due to the convenience of having a smartphone, on which radio content could be easily ­accessed via apps.

“Obviously for younger people, really everything is to do with the phone … they’re very ­attached to it and they are typically phone-first in everything they do,” Mr Rosin said.

“Any future-looking strategy that is targeting young people … has to keep that in mind.”

Mr Rosin said listening to audio via smartphones was the “biggest changemaker of the last 20 years”.

“As an example in the US, (for) a lot of the radio stations podcasting has come along and they aren’t creating … in some cases any content that you could podcast,” he said.

“Whereas your stations (in Australia) have so much going on that they are just creating (content) every day – all kinds of content that people might care about enough that they might listen to it on a time-shifted basis.

“You see all the investment that Australian radio has made, it’s really paying off.”

The report, released last week, also shows the huge boost in podcast listening in Australia, which has overtaken podcast consumption in the US on a per capita basis. According to the report, 48 per cent of the Australian population listened to a podcast in the last month, slightly ahead of the US, where the figure was 47 per cent.

To put that in context, in 2020 just 25 per cent of Australians consumed a podcast, compared to 37 per cent in the US.

When it comes to in-car listening, radio is the top choice with 88 per cent of respondents tuning in while behind the wheel.