Gen Z Listeners Still Choose Radio Over Podcasts

If you asked a room of Gen Z listeners what they had on during the morning drive, most people would guess podcasts. The audio industry has spent years treating this generation as podcast-first, with studios, brands, and advertisers all chasing young ears through show feeds. But new data from Edison Research says the opposite: for Gen Z listeners, the car still belongs to old-fashioned radio.

According to Edison's Share of Ear measurement for the second quarter of this year, as reported by Radio Ink, AM/FM stations command 70 percent of the ad-supported audio time that Americans ages 13 to 34 spend in vehicles. That is more than six times the share of the runner-up. Podcasts take a distant second at 11 percent, just ahead of streaming music at 10 percent. Music and music videos on YouTube account for 7 percent, with SiriusXM's ad-supported channels taking the remaining 2 percent.

The measurements cover both over-the-air and streamed radio, and count everyone in the car, not just the driver. Americans in the 13-to-34 bracket spend just under an hour a day listening to audio in the car, and most of that time goes to ad-supported platforms. In other words, roughly seven in ten of those in-car ad impressions land on radio, not on podcasts or playlists.

The radio habit runs deeper than the car

Gen Z listeners are not light audio consumers — quite the opposite. Edison data released earlier this year showed Americans ages 13 to 34 spend four and a half hours a day with audio, more than any other age group in the country. A separate cut of the second-quarter figures, as reported by Inside Radio, found that Gen Z listeners punch above their weight: the 13-to-29 segment makes up 25 percent of the population but accounts for 28 percent of all daily audio listening. Their appetite for sound is intense; the format mix just is not what the podcast hype suggests.

Radio also leads Gen Z listeners' time outside the car. An iHeartMedia study cited by the trade outlet found that broadcast radio reaches 90 percent of teenagers ages 13 to 19 in a given month. Across all ad-supported audio, radio accounts for 47 percent of Gen Z listeners' time, compared with 31 percent for streaming music and 21 percent for podcasts. So even when young people choose what to play, the dial still beats the app more often than not.

Why podcasts lose the drive

None of this means podcasts are unpopular with young audiences. Edison's flagship Infinite Dial study, released in March and covered by RAIN News, found that about two-thirds of 12-to-34-year-olds had listened to or watched a podcast in the previous month — the highest penetration of any age group. The counterpoint is location: podcasts thrive at home, at work, and on the phone, while the car rewards content that starts instantly with nothing to decide. YouTube is the most common platform for podcast playback, followed by Spotify and Apple Podcasts, which suggests Gen Z listeners treat shows as something to watch or stream on demand rather than something to queue up in traffic.

There is also a business reason radio wins the drive. A large share of podcast listening happens on ad-free subscriptions, so it barely registers in ad-supported share measurements. Radio, by contrast, is almost entirely ad-supported, which makes it the clearest path for brands to reach young consumers in the moments closest to a purchase decision, as the trade report notes.

What it means for Gen Z listeners and the industry

For advertisers, the finding resets assumptions about where young ears actually are: the podcast generation still spends its in-car hour with the radio on. For listeners, it helps explain why radio formats keep evolving toward personality-driven shows that borrow podcast-style storytelling. And for policymakers, the numbers add weight to the push behind the AM Radio for Every Vehicle Act, which would require automakers to keep AM radio as standard equipment in new vehicles — legislation framed as critical for emergency alerts and local news.

The larger lesson is simpler. Gen Z listeners are the most enthusiastic audio audience in America, spending more daily time with sound than any other generation. They just spread that time across more formats than the podcast narrative allows. The generation everyone assumed had abandoned the dial never did — it simply carried radio along into the streaming age. For more on how young audiences consume shows, see the podcasts topic page, including the story of how podcast listeners settled the audio-versus-video debate.