Apple Podcasts
Hosting platforms · Listening apps
Address: 
Cupertino, CA, USA
Apple Podcasts is an audio streaming service and media player application developed by Apple for playing podcasts. Apple began supporting podcasts with iTunes 4.9 released in June 2005 and launched its first standalone mobile app in 2012. The app was later pre-installed with iOS beginning October 2014. The Apple Podcasts directory features more than two million shows. Apple Podcasts is available on iOS, iPadOS, macOS, watchOS, tvOS, CarPlay, visionOS, Microsoft Windows operating systems, web browsers, and on Amazon Alexa devices. Wikipedia
Website: www.apple.com
Owned by: Apple
About Apple Podcasts
Apple Podcasts is the world’s premier destination for podcast discovery and listening. It provides the best experience for listeners to explore millions of shows on every imaginable topic and to directly support the creators behind them. For fans looking to deepen their connection with their favorite podcasts, Apple Podcasts also offers thousands of premium subscriptions with benefits like exclusive content and ad-free listening. The entire library is available for free, and is seamlessly integrated across iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, and CarPlay, and on the web at https://podcasts.apple.com.
Latest news
- Feb 11: Apple has made a number of commitments to the UK government, including that Apple will "rank apps in their app stores in a fair, objective and transparent way". The Apple Podcasts directory uses the same systems as the App Store; and ranking of podcasts is quite similar (based on recent installations for apps, recent follows for podcasts). Are changes similarly afoot for the way podcasts are ranked?
- Feb 10: Back in December 2021, the National Association for the Deaf took SiriusXM to court for not providing transcripts in its app. The legal action is still going on - the latest is that we'll hear nothing until April this year. In the meantime, a standard for transcripts in podcast content has been produced; transcripts have been put live in Apple Podcasts, in Pocket Casts and in Spotify, and SiriusXM released a new app with transcription. It's our opinion that while the original court action was clearly instrumental in moving our industry forward, it would appear that the only people benefitting from this ongoing legal action are the lawyers.
- Feb 2:
Fun fact: in the Podcast Index, there are 112,200 duplicates (showing the same title and author). (There are a surprising amount of duplicates in Apple Podcasts and Spotify as well.) Algorithmic search normally hides the duplicates - but as the number of podcasts grow, so will the number of duplicates too. Widespread use of the
podcast:guidcould help this.
Data credits: Google Maps, Podnews newsletter, Wikipedia