Fastest Growing Category
For the last seven years, when podcast listeners were asked which topics they listen to the most the top answer has been Comedy. However, according to Q2 2026 findings from Edison Podcast Metrics, True Crime is now the most popular topic among U.S. weekly podcast listeners, edging past Comedy for the first time.
When Edison started tracking listener preferences in 2019, True Crime was in fifth place but with each passing year it continued to move up.
Triton Digital's Q2 2026 U.S. Podcast Ranker data also recorded True Crime among the quarter's fastest-growing categories by reach, with My Favorite Murder ranking third among all podcasts in average weekly downloads in Triton's server-side data.
Engaged Audience
Edison's True Crime Consumer Report, produced with audiochuck, found that 84 percent of Americans age 13 and up consume some form of True Crime and 89 percent of weekly podcast listeners have binged True Crime podcasts. The same study found these listeners are 4.4 times more likely than True Crime fans who don't listen to podcasts to submit a tip to help solve a case, 3.3 times more likely to sign a petition tied to a case, and 3.6 times more likely to donate to a related cause. Edison's research team noted that listeners extend that association beyond hosts to the advertisers on these shows.
What Counts As True Crime?
The topic's rise comes as podcast listening continues to grow, with Edison Research reporting that 55 percent of Americans age 12 and up now listen monthly, the first time regular listening has crossed half the population.
So what exactly is True Crime? Some of the category's biggest shows blend in mystery, horror, comedy or internet culture, and their hosts don't always lead with the label. Rotten Mango bills itself as true crime "plus all things spooky" and regularly wanders into internet subcultures and pop culture stories. MrBallen brands his show around the "strange, dark and mysterious" rather than crime itself. Even Edison's measurement acknowledges the fuzziness, offering subscribers a second ranking method that captures unaided listening and maps it back to Apple's assigned genres and subgenres.
However the category gets defined, True Crime is currently leading all podcast topics among U.S. weekly listeners.
Sherry Del Rizzo
Sherry leads editorial at ADOPTER Media, translating the agency's campaign experience and podcast advertising expertise into education for the industry. Her job, in short: take what ADOPTER learns from running real campaigns and turn it into something worth reading.
