Understanding today’s complex media consumer habits means that advertisers need more granular data to stay informed and reach the right audiences.
The Record is a quarterly report card on how U.S. consumers spend their listening day, fueled by Nielsen and Edison Research. While advertisers are constantly tracking changes in consumer behavior to improve the impact of their cross-channel marketing, The Record helps cut through with a unique representation of the time spent with ad supported audio.
So how have audio listening habits shifted in Q4 2025 compared to the prior quarter? Let’s dig into the data.
The Q4 audio overview
Daily audio consumption amounted to 3 hours and 54 minutes of daily listening across both ad supported and ad free platforms like radio, podcasts, streaming music services and satellite radio. In the fourth quarter of 2025, ad supported audio accounted for 63% of all listening.
Zeroing in on the ad supported audio universe, consumers spent 61% of their daily time in the fourth quarter with radio, 21% with podcasts, 15% with streaming music and 3% with satellite radio.
For advertisers planning for audio marketing campaigns, it is important to consider that 82% of all daily ad supported audio time goes to radio and podcasts, while only 15% goes to streaming music services.
A quarterly snapshot: Edison Research Share of Ear®
This chart shows how U.S. audiences spent their time with ad supported audio in Q4 2025.
Explore even more audio insights with the additional data tables.
Tracking radio listening by format
The following tables detail how the share of radio audience varies by format, age, demographic and platform for the top 15 largest-reaching AM/FM radio formats. These differentiate between the share of all radio listening and the share of streaming listening specifically, which are those listening to the digital streams of AM/FM radio stations.
Explore even more audio insights with the additional data tables.
Explore even more audio insights with the additional data tables.
Get the latest audio insights
Explore the latest audio consumer insights from our January 2026 Audio Today Report, which details the power of radio among Hispanic consumers. Nielsen data shows that radio reaches more than 93% of all Hispanic audiences in the U.S. and creates unique emotional connections with listeners that influence them to act on ad exposures to a much higher degree than the general population.
The Record provides a quarterly analysis of audio listening behaviors across the total radio universe. The charts represent average daily usage and share of listening for U.S. audiences.
For even more audio data and insights, explore our audio measurement solutions and connect with our team of experts.
Source
1 Source: Edison Research, “Share of Ear®” Q4 2025
