Serial catapulted the mass popularity of podcasts and True Crime podcasts like Crime Junkie and My Favorite Murder.
But to better understand what’s driving the category’s success, let’s go deeper into True Crime podcast statistics.
Our Top 25 list was generated by Podchaser’s Power Score. This podcast metric calculates the popularity and impact of a podcast by analyzing over 30 data points.
So let’s put our investigator hats on and dig into some True Crime podcast data!*
How many true crime podcasts are there?
There are over 23,000 podcasts in the True Crime category of Podchaser as of March 2024.
What Are the Top True Crime Podcasts?
- Crime Junkie
- Dateline NBC
- Casefile True Crime
- Morbid
- My Favorite Murder
- Serial
- Darknet Diaries
- The Deck
- 48 Hours
- RedHanded
- CounterClock
- American Scandal
- Sword and Scale
- Something Was Wrong
- Rotten Mango
- Criminal
- This is Actually Happening
- True Crime with Kendall Rae
- Up and Vanished
- Cold Case Files
- The Generation Why Podcast
- The Deck Investigates
- Murder With My Husband
- Murder, Mystery & Makeup
- True Crime – Tödliche Verbrechen
Who Listens to True Crime Podcasts?
We looked at Podchaser Pro data to see who listens to True Crime podcasts. Here’s what we found:
10 Mind-Blowing True Crime Podcast Statistics
- 61% of the Top 25 True Crime podcast listeners are women.
- The average median age of the top True Crime podcasts is 29.6.
- More men than women listen to MrBallen Podcast: Strange, Dark & Mysterious Stories, Park Predators, and Darknet Diaries.
- Darknet Diaries has the oldest average median listeners at 35.7 years old.
- US listeners dominate the Top 25 True Crime podcasts, except for Canadian True Crime, where they come in second after Canadian listeners.
- True Crime podcasts are popular in the US, UK, Canada, Australia, Ireland, Brazil, the Philippines, and India.
- Top listener occupations include nurses, managers, authors/writers, journalists/reporters, and directors.
- True crime podcasts are also popular with marketers, editors, teachers, and software engineers.
- Top employers include Starbucks, Target, McDonald’s, Walt Disney, Walmart, the US Army, and Apple.
- Top brands True Crime podcast listeners like include Instagram, Disney, Google AdWords, Funny or Die, Associated Press, Starbucks, YouTube, and NPR.
Final Thoughts
These findings give marketers, advertisers, PR agencies, podcasters, and podcast listeners a clear window into who listens to True Crime podcasts.
In addition, these insights give brands ideas about how their products, services, and reps can authentically plug into podcast listener interests.
But these stats are just scratching the surface. Podchaser Pro gives you even more detailed information on each podcast. Pro users can see listeners’ marital status, median income, parental status, top listener cities, and much more—plus podcast contacts.
To learn more, request a demo of Podchaser Pro.