The Serial Factor: Podcast Listeners Are Still Obsessed With True Crime

Podcasts have been around for a couple of decades, but they didn’t really go mainstream until 2014, when Serial put them on the map. As of this writing, over 3 million podcasts have been launched(Opens in a new window), according to the Listen Notes podcast search engine. (Go ahead, create your own.)

Do you share your taste in podcasts with the rest of America? Pew Research Center(Opens in a new window) did a deep dive into the top-ranked podcasts in the US to find out which topics pop. It quantifies only 451 of them; the list(Opens in a new window) is based on the top 300 podcasts in daily charts on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

Unsurprisingly, the topic that dominates podcasts is true crime: Almost a quarter of podcasts make murder and mayhem their primary focus. (It’s even become a cliché; a streaming show called Based on a True Story(Opens in a new window) is about podcasters working with a serial killer.) The second most covered topic is politics and government, at 10%.

(Credit: Pew Research Center)

About 20% of podcasts feature more than one topic, while 12% don’t fit any major category. Pew cites, for example, one popular podcast that’s just groups of people playing D&D.

Fifteen percent of podcasts have a news focus, usually on politics or sports. Also of note is the number of podcasts that are affiliated with a news organization—18%—with another 51% affiliated with some other kind of organization. Only 31% are truly independent.

(Credit: Pew Research Center)

Half of the news-focused podcasts are commentary on what’s happening IRL; 22% go for Serial-style deep reporting and analysis or for interviews.

Podcasts are far from being audio-only. Pew checked in with each title to see whether it has a web presence beyond the download, and 73% do. What’s more, slightly more than half have released videos related to the podcast.

(Credit: Pew Research Center)

Across all the topics, Pew found that formats vary: 38% do deep reporting on topics, 16% are commentary, and 23% prefer interviews. The majority (58%) have a single host. The average length of a top-ranked podcast is 50 minutes. Finally, almost half turn to listeners for financial contributions. (In separate research from earlier this year(Opens in a new window), Pew found that 13% of listeners have paid for a podcast subscription.)

For more details, read the full report(Opens in a new window) at Pew Research Center.