800,000 Podcasts Milestone Surpassed

Cincinnati OH, USA—More than 800,000 valid podcasts are now available in Apple Podcasts, according to independent data from the My Podcast Reviews service, which launched a new webpage to track the podcast industry’s growth (MyPodcastReviews.com/stats).

The Apple Podcasts app accounts for how more than half of all people listen to podcasts, according to frequent reports from the top podcast-hosting providers. Apple’s podcast catalog also serves to populate many other podcast apps and directories through the Apple media application programming interface (API).

Apple launched support for podcasts in iTunes 4.9, release on June 28, 2005. This was the first inflection point for podcasts by bringing podcast discovery, subscription, and consumption to Windows and OS X PCs in more than 100 countries. “I’ve been enjoying podcasts ever since Apple first brought them to iTunes,” says Daniel J. Lewis, Cincinnati-based podcaster and creator of the My Podcast Reviews service. “My life was saved and changed through podcasting, and I’m thrilled to be part of this passion-filled industry that is unlike any other.”

My Podcast Reviews is a service for podcasters to see and share all their podcast reviews from every country. Lewis launched My Podcast Reviews on June 10, 2014, with free and paid plans, and it was the first service of its kind. Today, My Podcast Reviews serves more than 6,200 podcasters.

Lewis also hosts The Audacity to Podcast, a “meta” podcast about podcasting that was awarded Best Technology Podcast in the 2012 annual People’s Choice Podcast Awards. On December 3, 2018, Lewis published “What New Data Suggests about Podcast-Hosting Customers,” which revealed never-before-seen data on the podcast industry and reported the total number of podcasts as approximately 609,000 at that time. “Podcasting is full of passion, so it’s no surprise that podcasters love seeing data on their own podcast as well as on the whole industry,” said Lewis. That article from 2018 was only the start. “In late 2018, I began building a new service to collect and serve podcast-industry data that no one has had access to before.”

Over the next year, Lewis continued working on a new backend for My Podcast Reviews, collecting gigabytes of data along the way. “When we launch our upcoming new product in 2020, podcasters will be amazed at the data we’ll be able to show them and—even more importantly—how they can use that data to improve and grow their own shows,” said Lewis. “With Apple Podcasts’ surpassing the milestone of 800,000 valid podcasts on December 10, this seemed like a perfect time to launch our new Podcast Industry Statistics page and announce our new Data Concierge service.”

The new Podcast Industry Data Concierge Service, from My Podcast Reviews, will allow podcasters, agencies, advertisers, interview-bookers, and more to get custom data on the podcast industry. Lewis offers, “Want a weekly list of all new podcasts matching a particular query? We can do that. Want a list of all podcasts from the Business category with 10 or more episodes that have been active in the last week and have more than 100 ratings and reviews? We can do that. We’ll customize a plan for your data needs!”

Along with counting the total number of valid podcasts, the new Podcast Industry Statistics webpage also reports the total number of available episodes (over 27.6 million), the number of podcasts added and removed from Apple Podcasts each day, and multiple dimensions of activity.

“This is only the beginning—both for the services we offer and for the podcast industry as a whole.”