True Crime Podcast Audiences Skew Female: What About Other Categories?

Remember the study by Kelli Boling that came out in 2019 claiming that nearly 75% of True Crime podcast listeners are women?

We thought it would be interesting to look into podcast audience gender skew on a larger scale and derive insights from other categories in our database.

Rephonic is a database of over 2.5m podcasts and where there are enough data points we estimate the gender skew of their audience [1]. We used these estimates not only to look at the relationship between gender and podcast categories but also listener numbers and episode length.

Please note that our gender skew metric is only applied to shows with a large enough audience that we feel confident in making a prediction, so this article's conclusions may be biased towards larger shows.

TL;DR:

  • Spirituality podcasts skew more female than any other category
  • Categories including Music, Sports and Technology skew very male
  • Podcasts with very female audiences tend to have significantly fewer listeners
  • Podcasts with very male audiences tend to have longer episodes

🙏 🏈 Spirituality shows skew the most female, football shows skew the most male

First, we looked at the median gender skew by category and found that our data supports Kelli’s finding that True Crime audiences tend to skew female. We also found this to be true of Christianity and Mental Health podcasts and several other categories.

Categories such as Entrepreneurship and Comedy Interviews tend to have audiences that are evenly split and Music podcasts have very male audiences [2].

🎧 Podcasts that skew very female audiences tend to have fewer listeners

We tried grouping podcasts by gender skew and then calculated the median estimated weekly listeners (according to Rephonic's prediction algorithm).

Podcast audiences that skew female tend to have fewer listeners than those that skew male and those with an equal split. Podcasts with very female audiences have significantly fewer listeners.

Could this be because podcast listeners skew slightly male overall?

⏱️ Podcasts with very male audiences tend to have longer episodes

Finally, we looked at episode duration. In a previous article, we noted that the average episode length is 36 minutes. Our research for this article found that podcasts with very male audiences tend to have episodes that are significantly longer than this, with an average length of 56 minutes.

⚤ Podcasts that buck the trend

Having gained some insight into the audience gender skew of different podcast categories, we wanted to highlight some shows that don’t fit the pattern, whether intentionally or accidentally.

Chilluminati

Chilluminati podcast audience gender skew

The Chilluminati Podcast is a True Crime show, a category that tends to attract female listeners. The three hosts dive into topics covering everything from serial killers to aliens and promise to ‘keep you laughing the whole way’. Combining True Crime and Comedy is unusual, so it’s perhaps no surprise that we estimate this show to attract 50k listeners per episode, of which we believe the majority to be male.

The Cimorelli Podcast

Cimorelli podcast audience gender skew

The Cimorelli Podcast is hosted by members of the Cimorelli family, a singing group that gained a fanbase on YouTube for posting covers. Their episodes are self-described as ‘hilarious roundtable discussions on relationships, love and life’.

Listening to their episodes is almost like eavesdropping on a private, personal conversation. In a recent episode, they discussed their postpartum journeys and how their bodies changed drastically after giving birth. We found that Music podcast audiences tend to skew very male, so this show provides some much-needed variety within the category.

The Dad Edge Podcast

The Dad Edge podcast audience gender skew

Listeners of podcasts in the Kids & Family category tend to skew female, but not The Dad Edge Podcast. Characterised as a ‘community of Fathers who all share a set of values’, Host Larry Hagner discusses the common challenges of fatherhood and aims to help listeners be the best fathers they can be.

He often republishes live Q&A episodes, exploring questions such as ‘how to get your kids to do what they need to do without a fight’ and ‘how to guide, coach and encourage a young athlete’.

Trading Secrets

Trading Secrets podcast audience gender skew

Trading Secrets is hosted by Jason Tartick and promises to explore the money questions we’ve been told not to discuss. Investing shows tend to have a primarily male audience so this podcast is an anomaly for attracting a mainly female listenership.

Typically, Jason interviews financially successful guests to find out how they made their fortune and spent it. In a recent episode, Jason welcomed the season 19 winner of America’s Next Top Model to discuss how she spent her $100,000 prize money, how much models earn in a year, and whether TV shows or movies pay more.

Conclusion

Having looked at our data it’s clear that there are differences between podcast categories in terms of audience demographics.

When it comes to podcasts in these categories, we don't know whether the hosts intentionally crafted their content to attract a specific audience or focused on creating content that matches their own interests and expertise.

We think that it’s important to consider your target audience, interests and expertise when launching a new show so we published a full guide on how to do it.

Rephonic provides data for over 2.5 million podcasts so you can research the competition and check out their listener numbers, audience skew, ratings and more.

Footnotes

[1] Rephonic estimates the gender skew of a podcast audience. Our data is therefore not 100% accurate but rather a best guess. We believe the error to be low when taken in aggregate.

Our gender skew metric is only applied to shows with a large enough audience that we feel confident in making a prediction, so this article's conclusions may be biased towards larger shows.

[2] This chart only includes categories where there are at least 100 shows with known gender skew on our database.

Becca Butcher

Becca Butcher

Marketing at Rephonic

Find, pitch and get featured on podcasts

Rephonic gives you listener numbers, contacts, demographics and more across 2.5m+ podcasts.


Becca Butcher

Becca Butcher

Marketing at Rephonic

Find, pitch and get
featured on podcasts

Rephonic gives you listener numbers, contacts, demographics and more across 2.5m+ podcasts.