It was a great Q3 for audio in America: daily listening ticked up, podcasts and sports stations surged in streaming, and at the center of it all, traditional radio continues to call the tune on the American audio dial, according to Nielsen and Edison Research.
The Record: Q3 2025 paints a picture of a marketplace in rhythm rather than flux. In Q3, Americans spent an average of 3 hours and 53 minutes per day listening to audio, up slightly from 3 hours and 50 minutes in Q2. Ad-supported content continued to account for 64% of total listening, the same level recorded in the previous quarter.
While the overall ratio of ad-supported listening did not change, its composition shifted slightly. AM/FM radio held 62% of ad-supported audio in Q3, down two percentage points from the 64% recorded in Q2, while podcasts grew modestly to 20% from 19%. Ad-supported streaming music remained consistent at 15%, and satellite radio held steady at 3%.
Despite fractional declines in share, traditional radio continues to anchor the audio marketplace. Combined with podcasts, the two account for 82% of all ad-supported audio—a figure unchanged from the prior quarter, reinforcing both formats as advertisers’ most powerful platforms for reach and engagement.
The data suggest a modest migration within ad-supported listening rather than a structural change: small percentage shifts toward podcasts and digital radio streams indicate that audience diversification is happening inside, not outside, the ad-supported ecosystem.
At the format level, The Record’s cross-market PPM data show News/Talk maintaining its top spot, capturing 10.6% of total AM/FM listening among adults 18 and older. That’s a fractional dip from Q2’s 10.9%, indicating continued dominance but mild erosion as other formats grow online. Adult Contemporary stayed at 7.2%, unchanged from the prior quarter, while Country slipped marginally from 6.2% to 6.1%.
Sports stations continued their climb in streaming environments, representing 10.4% of AM/FM station streaming overall, compared to 9.6% in Q2. Among adults 18–34, All-Sports stations made especially strong gains, rising to 11.5% of AM/FM streaming from 11.7% the quarter before, reinforcing that sports talk’s digital growth is more structural than seasonal.
Radio listening among adults 35 and older remained the bedrock of the medium. While Q2 saw this group giving 71% of its ad-supported listening time to radio, Q3’s The Record shows only a minor softening in share, with News/Talk, Classic Hits, and Country holding firm above 5% each.
Younger listeners, 18–34, continued to favor a more even split across radio, podcasts, and streaming music, but the composition was stable quarter-over-quarter. Radio accounted for roughly the same proportion of total listening, and podcasts continued to represent the strongest share of ad-supported digital listening among this group.
