75% of Americans Listen to Podcasts — Here's Why the Other 25% Are Still Sitting Out

Three out of four Americans have now listened to a podcast. That's genuinely remarkable for a medium that basically had to explain what it was to most people a decade ago. But here's the stat that should make every podcaster, app developer, and audio nerd lean forward in their chair: one in four Americans has still never pressed play.

New research from Sounds Profitable — the industry's most credible research voice — just dropped a deep-dive called The Last Quarter: Understanding America's Podcast Holdouts, and the findings are equal parts fascinating and fixable.

Who Are These 25%, Exactly?

First, let's kill the easy assumption: these aren't people who can't access podcasts. According to Sounds Profitable's Tom Webster, who surveyed over 5,000 respondents for the underlying Podcast Landscape 2025 study, the infrastructure is there. Smartphones are everywhere. Wi-Fi is everywhere. The barrier isn't technical.

The barrier is motivation. Nobody has given them a compelling enough reason to start.

That framing matters, because it means the holdout problem is a product and perception problem — not a distribution problem. Podcasting hasn't sold itself well enough to the last quarter of the country.

The Friction Nobody Talks About Enough

If you've tried recommending a podcast to a non-listener friend, you know the look you get. There's the time commitment concern. The "where do I even start" paralysis. And then there's the ad problem.

Podcast advertising is uniquely aggressive compared to other media. Host-read ads are long, personal, and — for a first-time listener — feel jarring and almost manipulative. You're just getting to know a host, and suddenly they're doing a two-minute sponsored read for a mattress company with a promo code.

For existing fans, that's a known tax. For a holdout taking their first test drive? It can feel like the whole experience is just a dressed-up infomercial.

Why This Is Podcasting's Growth Problem to Solve

Webster's framing — "nobody has given them a good enough reason" — is generous, but pointed. It puts the onus on the industry. Podcasting has been so good at converting early adopters and enthusiasts that it never really had to figure out the harder sell.

Now it does. The low-hanging fruit is gone. The next wave of listeners will need a smoother on-ramp: better discovery, better apps, and — critically — a better listening experience that doesn't feel like a gauntlet of ad reads.

This is where modern tools start to matter for the holdout conversion story.

How PodSkip Lowers the Barrier for New Listeners

For the 75% already listening, PodSkip is a quality-of-life upgrade. But for that last 25%? It could be the thing that finally makes podcasts feel like their medium.

PodSkip is a free podcast app with on-device AI that listens ahead and identifies sponsored segments — then skips them automatically. It catches host-read and baked-in ads, the kind that Spotify and Amazon's apps simply can't detect because those segments are woven directly into the audio file.

No more sitting through a three-minute Squarespace read on episode one. No more fumbling to fast-forward through a promo code you'll never use. Just the show.

For a holdout who's on the fence, that's not a small thing. First impressions in podcasting are everything, and right now, first impressions often include ads.

The Bigger Picture

Podcasting has come an insane distance. Seventy-five percent adoption is a number most media formats would kill for. But the industry is clearly hungry for that last quarter — and research like Webster's is the first step toward understanding what it'll take to get there.

The answer probably isn't one thing. Better recommendations, better onboarding, better apps. But removing the ad friction? That's the kind of concrete, immediate improvement that doesn't require a holdout to change their behavior at all. The app just works better.

Sometimes the best growth hack is making the experience good enough that people forget to be skeptical.

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FAQ

Q: How many Americans have listened to a podcast? As of the latest Sounds Profitable research (based on a 2025 survey of 5,000+ respondents), three out of four Americans — 75% — have now consumed a podcast.

Q: Why haven't 25% of Americans listened to a podcast yet? The research suggests it's not a technical barrier — it's a motivation problem. Most holdouts simply haven't been given a compelling reason to start. Ad-heavy experiences and poor discovery are commonly cited friction points.

Q: Can an app really skip podcast ads automatically? Yes. PodSkip uses on-device AI that listens ahead to identify sponsored segments and skips them before you hear them. Unlike basic chapter-skip features, it works on host-read and baked-in ads that other apps miss entirely — and it's completely free.

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If you've been trying to pull a friend into podcasting with zero luck, maybe the answer isn't a better show recommendation. Maybe it's a better app. Download PodSkip free and send them the link — first listen ad-free might be all it takes.