What's got everybody listening again: The rise of digital audio

When Duvall Hecht began recording books on cassette tapes in the 1970s, he was filling a gap for long-distance commuters who wanted something more stimulating than radio. Half a century later, audiobooks are no longer just a way to pass the time. Instead, the convenience of listening has sparked an increased appetite for digital audio, allowing reluctant readers to reengage with scholarly content. 

In the past few years there has been a boom in audio. In 2025, around 584 million people worldwide listened to podcasts, with 15.5 million listeners in the UK alone. Audiobooks have followed a similar trajectory — in 2021, 44% of UK adults reported listening, which translates to roughly 25 million people. Young audiences are especially driving this surge: between 2019 and 2021, children’s podcast listening grew 20%, and nearly half of 13 to 24-year-olds said they had tuned into a podcast in the last month — a 57% jump since 2018.

Music streaming service Spotify has recognised this trend and, bringing together multiple forms of audio to a single platform, now offers audiobooks, radio, and podcasts.

Even the entertainment industry is taking notice. In January 2026, the Golden Globes will add a new category: Best Podcast.

What’s behind the appeal?

For one, audio helps people to manage modern life. With rising screen fatigue, many are turning to headphones as a break from constant scrolling. Audiobooks can be played on the move, while commuting or doing chores, and text-to-speech tools are increasingly used to listen to work documents hands-free.

Far from being “lazy”, listening is active. In August 2019, the Society of Neuroscience published research showing that the brain registers and recognises words and information in almost identical ways whether written or spoken. Pamela Varley notes that some parts of the brain even work harder during listening than during reading, while comprehension processes remain the same.

Digital audio has begun to revolutionise the ways we process information. Audiobooks and podcasts have become a pathway to accessing more difficult and time-consuming content, released from the demands of attention, reading ability, and time constraints. 

Audiobooks increase phonemic awareness and help increase vocabulary. They have also been proven to elicit higher levels of emotional engagement than filmic experiences of the same stories.

Interestingly, there has been a rise of AI-narrated audiobooks with Audible releasing plans to use AI-generated voices. A study in 2021 compared the emotional intimacy effect of synthetic versus human voices in audiobooks. Listeners formed stronger mental imagery, were more engaged, and remembered more information from human voices. The Audio Publishers Association suggests consumer willingness to try AI-narrated audiobooks dropped year over year, from 77% in 2023 to 70% in 2025.

Audiobooks are also appealing to parents who struggle to read to their children. There are now a range of storytelling apps. A new report from the National Literacy Trust (NLT) suggests children enjoy listening to audio more than reading books. Just over 42% of children aged between eight and 18 said they enjoyed listening to audiobooks and podcasts in their free time in 2024,

There has been a call for audiobooks to be used in conjunction with traditional materials to teach children with learning difficulties. 

Bergman’s Reading While Listening model "allows children to shift their attention from the laborious effort of reading individual words to the far more interesting job of understanding the narrative."  

There is however, a large amount of resistance that argue that audiobooks are stopping children from grappling with the material for themselves. 

Stacey Waite’s PhD thesis, Embracing Audiobooks as an Effective Educational Tool, suggests that educators are hesitant to use audiobooks: "Since the narrator of the story is doing the decoding for the listener, one could argue that half of the work is done already."

The accessibility and growing popularity of audiobooks suggests that digital audio is becoming a valuable complement to traditional reading rather than a replacement, helping to break down barriers to literacy and broadening the audience for literature and knowledge in ways print alone cannot.