Here's a new and improved way to see Podcast Industry Insights.
Thank you for joining me for The Audacity to Podcast.
I'm Daniel J. Lewis.
I've been tracking metrics on the podcast industry since 2018,
and there's an interesting story behind that.
For many years, my podcast reviews had been running. Yes.
This is totally irrelevant.
My podcastreviews.com turned into Podgagement.
But for many years, that was developed for me by someone else in
a programming language that has been dying, Ruby on Rails, and a
language that I just did not want to learn.
But I really wanted to rebuild my podcast reviews into something
much better. And I'd been planning that for multiple years.
And in 2018, I decided to get serious about that and start
rebuilding it myself.
But that meant I needed to learn how to code because I didn't
know how to code before then.
I knew HTML and CSS as a web designer.
So I was a front end developer in that sense of just the HTML and
CSS, but I didn't know JavaScript.
I knew back end PHP just enough to make a WordPress plugin,
social subscribe and follow icons, or for short, subscribe and
follow, and that was about it.
So when I decided to rebuild my podcast reviews, I wanted to
learn a programming language.
I studied what the options were and decided I wanted to learn
JavaScript.
Because with JavaScript, you can learn back end code running
Node.
Js, and you can use front end JavaScript like with React and
Next. Js.
And so JavaScript can help run an entire site, an entire
ecosystem of code to make a website or an app work.
And so I started studying JavaScript and Node.
Js, and I took a few courses on that to thoroughly learn it.
And the first thing I built was going to be the back end engine
for powering the new My Podcast reviews. But that was 2018.
And while I was building that engine and having it running, I
started discovering some interesting insights, like how many
podcasts are actually in Apple Podcasts or how 1 podcast has some
crossover audience with another podcast and their incoming and
outgoing networking, as I now call it, inside of Podgagement.
So I built this engine to then start collecting all of this
information, saving it to a database, as well as I started
tracking the charts at some point shortly after that.
And my thought was this was going to be the foundation for the
new my podcast reviews.
And so I started presenting some of this really cool data on the
mypodcastreviews.com website, especially like when Apple Podcasts
hit 1,000,000 podcasts inside of the Apple Podcast catalog.
I was sharing that out, some press releases, and had some fun
with predictions on when that might be.
And that was all through the my podcast reviews brand.
But that was around the time I started realizing that my podcast
reviews had a branding problem.
Because if someone wanted to cite the statistics that I was
sharing, they might say, according to my podcast reviews, there
are nearly 1,000,000 podcasts in Apple Podcasts.
Now think about that grammatically without any proper nouns in
there.
Are you saying your podcast reviews told you there are nearly
1000000 podcasts in Apple Podcast?
How do your podcast reviews tell you that?
You see the problem there?
By having that my in there and even it being branded to podcast
reviews was a problem. It just didn't connect.
So that's when I decided back then, I need to rebrand my podcast
reviews when I launched this new site and rebuild it completely
from scratch.
But, also, I wanted to share this data, and I was starting to
realize that this data is pretty cool what I'm able to track
here.
And people were starting to quote from the statistics that I was
sharing and asking me questions for further insight into some of
the statistics.
So I decided I want to spin this out onto its own website.
So it's no longer data sitting on top of my podcast reviews, but
it is its own thing, and thus podcastindustryinsights.com was
born.
Now that code that I built in 2018, nearly 8 years ago, has been
running ever since then until just recently.
That poorly written legacy code has lasted for nearly 8 years.
It's broken down here and there a few times, and the website too
has been powered by WordPress using a charting plugin to display
the charts.
And that's had its own complications, like some of the caching
would get really weird sometimes where most of the charts would
refresh, but not 1 of them.
And I couldn't figure out what is caching this.
I would clear all the caches everywhere and just nothing seemed
to do it. And then just magically, it would start working.
And some of that stuff frustrated me, and maybe that frustrated
too if you ever checked out the website and noticed that certain
charts seem to be outdated.
That was because of some weird caching thing.
And managing the WordPress side of it, as much as I love
WordPress, it was slow.
But as soon as I logged in, if you were logged out, you would get
the cached version of the page, and it would load fairly quickly.
But being logged in, it was extremely slow and extremely
complicated to work with.
For several years, I've been tracking much deeper data about the
activity inside of the 110 genres or categories inside Apple
Podcasts.
And I wanted to display those on my podcast reviews or then later
Podcast Industry Insights, but I didn't want to make a 110
different pages on WordPress.
And on top of that, multiplied a 110 times how many charts I
wanted to make. That's how many charts I'd have to have.
Hundreds of charts.
It's not like I could just have a single chart and swap out its
data dynamically, at least on that WordPress side, Because that's
not how it was built.
The plugin and WordPress weren't designed for that style of just
swapping out the data, but keeping the page.
So I just decided I can't display this data.
I'll just have to wait until someday in the future when maybe I
have time to do it or maybe I can systemize it in some other way.
And that's finally come about.
Because when I did eventually finish rebuilding my podcast
reviews into Podgagement years later, then I still had this
legacy code doing all of this cool stuff, collecting new
interesting insights, like the incoming and outgoing networking
section of Podgagement where you can see what podcasts are linked
out from yours from inside Apple Podcast, as well as of all of
the millions of other podcasts out there in Apple Podcast, which
of them are linking back to yours through their crossover
audience in that algorithm. I track that.
And I think I'm the only 1 who's been tracking that on such a
wide scale like that.
And I use that data now inside of Podgagement, which is the
replacement for my podcast reviews.
And that's been really cool, and that's been running on this very
old legacy code.
But I really wanted to update that code because it's slow, it was
poorly written, it was sloppy, and there were a lot of places
where it just wasn't efficient, and so it was getting expensive
to run it.
So I finally decided recently to rebuild the back end of that and
the whole engine behind that that was powering that, collecting
that information, saving it to the database, and how all of that
is stored.
I also then wanted to take the opportunity to update the front
end, what you see on podcastindustryinsights.com.
And I'm thrilled with the new podcastindustryinsights.com that is
now available to you, and it is completely free.
I used to sell access to an API to get some of the information or
you had to pay in order to see some historic data, like how many
podcasts there were a year ago or so.
Now it's all completely free. There's not a paywall.
There's not even an email wall or opt in wall.
What do they call that?
Where you have to enter your email address in order to see the
information. And the site isn't littered with advertising either.
I have 1 ad banner section on each of the statistics page.
And for now, that's just advertising my own stuff.
It's advertising Podgagement, PodChapters, and The Audacity to
Podcast.
There is the opportunity for someone else to sponsor that
particular page if they want to, but I don't really intend for
this to be a money making thing anymore.
It's kind of like the byproduct of an engine that's powering
features inside of Podgagement.
And so I'll just make these statistics available for free to
podcasters like you who want to see how's the industry doing, how
many podcasts are still active, how many are in a particular
genre and such.
It's also really useful for podcasting professionals, like
producers or agencies and networks and such.
And it's extremely helpful for anyone who wants to keep an eye on
the growth of the podcast industry, like journalists.
So go to podcastindustryinsights.com to check it out yourself.
But I want to walk you through some of the existing and new
features that I'm excited about.
First thing is, and you've been able to do this for a long time,
is track the total number of podcasts in Apple Podcasts, Podcast
Index, and even YouTube. More on YouTube in a moment.
You've been able to see this for a while.
You could visit the website podcastindustryinsights.com.
Click on Apple or Podcast Index, and you would be able to see how
many podcasts there are as well as some historical information.
Well, I've expanded that historical information.
So now you can see years back into the past, not just the 13
months that it was before.
It was 13 months so that you could see the current month a year
ago, as well as see the current month as it's building out.
But now you can see as far back as 7 years at this time of this
recording.
So you can see how the industry has grown over the years, and
you'll discover some interesting patterns from that.
Like, for example, it seemed like the industry's growth rate
suddenly slowed in 2021.
And some people around that time started reporting things on, oh,
no.
The podcast industry is slowing down because there aren't as many
new podcast launching as there used to be before.
And on the surface, that's kind of correct, but it's not telling
the full story because this had nothing to do with COVID
lockdowns.
It had everything to do with Anchor, now called Spotify for
creators.
Because it was in 2020 that Anchor stopped auto publishing their
pollution of podcasts to Apple Podcasts.
So no longer was it just, hey.
Is this thing on getting published as a podcast?
I think in some cases, maybe accidentally or unintentionally.
Now it is an intentional opt in that the users have to do, and I
think that's the way it should be.
People should have to opt in to say, yes.
I want my podcast out there in in Apple Podcasts and all of the
podcast apps that are populated from the Apple Podcast catalog.
I think that should be an intentional opt in, not an automatic
thing.
So before that, Anchor was just polluting with millions of what I
call pod flashes out there where it's a flash in the pan, where
it's just 1 episode and nothing.
And they stopped doing that in 2021, and that's why the growth
rate of the number of podcasts have slowed.
But it's still been a consistent growth rate since then.
And you can look at that now for years of historical information
over at podcastindustryinsights.com.
And a few years ago, I started adding Podcast Index to that.
And Podcast Index works a little bit differently.
I don't necessarily agree with their approach to it, but still
it's interesting insight to share.
And that is that they not only track from some of the data that I
track for them, what's in Apple Podcast, but they also go out and
discover podcasts that are out there, which can lead to some
unintentional inclusions, and I'd say maybe a lot of
unintentional inclusions.
But still, it's an interesting number to see, and I've been
tracking that over time.
And you can see how that looks over years.
And I even track how many podcasts there are on YouTube.
Go over there to podcastindustryinsights.com/youtube.
In fact, pause the episode right now and go there.
Podcastindustryinsights.com/youtube. I'll wait.
Do you see my little joke there? Yeah.
Until YouTube is actually a podcast platform, which it is not
because nothing on YouTube is powered by RSS.
You cannot add an RSS feed to YouTube, and you cannot follow
what's on YouTube through an RSS feed, it is not a podcasting
platform, and therefore, there are 0 podcasts on YouTube and 0
podcast episodes on YouTube. I know that is a strong opinion.
I am sticking with that opinion for what's a podcast,
what'sapodcast.com, by the way, and that's why that's there.
I know it's a little bit of a troll, but also in case YouTube
ever does become an actual podcast platform, then I'll certainly
include podcasts on podcastindustryinsights.com.
You can also see how active podcasts are.
And I recommend looking at the Podcast Index and Apple Podcast
pages for this because you can see how active podcasts are for if
they've had any activity, and that is maybe their first episode
or any episode within the last 90 days as well as other amounts
of time, like last 30 days, last 10 days, last 60 days, last 7
days.
And I think that's a very interesting metric to see how many
podcasts have published an episode within the last 7 days.
And it's a much smaller number than you would think.
Go over there to podcastindustryinsights.com to see what the
number currently is.
And the small percentage of Apple Podcast that have published an
episode within the last 7 days. And I track that.
And you can track that over time too.
And it's really interesting to see that the number, not just the
percentage, the number of podcasts that are consistently
publishing has decreased a little bit, which I think don't get
overwhelmed by that number of millions of podcasts out there.
Although some of them are timeless. Yes.
Focus on that number of how many podcasts published an episode
within the last week.
That's closer to the kind of competition that you might have.
But then you can drill down into even deeper details.
But you can also see more information, especially on the Apple
Podcast page, podcastindustryinsights.com/apple for that.
You can see more information, like, how about of all of the
podcasts that have 1 episode in their feed, how many of them are
active within the last 90 days versus not active?
And you'll see a huge number of podcasts that are inactive that
have only 1 episode in their feed. And guess what?
Most of them are from Anchor.
And that's why it's so good that that pollution fire hose has
been turned off from Anchor.
But you can also see what about podcasts that have 10 or more
episodes in the feed.
How many of them are still active versus inactive?
You can also see the breakdown of how recently is the latest
episode from podcast 0 to 7 days and so on, and you can get a lot
more insight for the overall industry.
But and this is brand new and something I've wanted to do for
years.
You can dig deeper into category details from Apple Podcasts.
The reason I couldn't do this before goes back to that whole
WordPress front end thing and the charting plugin that I was
using, which served me well for many years, but I couldn't make
all of the pages for the 110 categories inside of Apple Podcasts.
Now I can because the new Podcast Industry insights.com is built
on Next. Js. It runs on JavaScript.
It's JavaScript all the way down, so I can dynamically change the
data on an existing chart. I don't have to create a 110 pages.
I don't have to create hundreds of charts.
I just create a few charts and tell it swap the data.
Just look at this record instead of that record of data, and it
changes fast, and it's animated in some cool ways.
So you can then see deeper data on specific categories of Apple
Podcasts.
Not just that overall picture of how many podcasts are in each
category, but you can see the growth now of how has the sports
medicine category grown over the last few years.
How many of those podcasts are still active versus inactive?
There is a little footnote on the site that there was some kind
of weird data calculation issue regarding only the categories for
a couple of months, and I didn't discover it until just recently.
So I unfortunately can't retroactively fix all of that.
But I fixed everything that I could there.
At least to this point, I haven't figured out a way to
retroactively fix some of that data.
But you can still look at the trend besides that weird looking
spot where you see some odd spikes and things.
You can look at the overall trend to see how has this particular
category of podcast grown.
Like, for a while, it was the tennis category that seemed to have
the fewest number of podcast.
Now can you take a guess what it is that has the fewest number of
podcast of the 110 podcast categories out there in Apple
Podcasts? It's actually mathematics.
So if you wanted to have a mathematics podcast, you would be up
against no more than 200 other podcasts.
I think it's closer to a 120 podcasts that have published an
episode within the last 90 days that are in the mathematics
category. And you can see that information.
Not only just is this their primary category, but how many are in
this category at all, even if it's their secondary category.
And you can see how many were added to this category,
deactivated, reactivated.
You can now see that at the category or genre level from Apple
Podcasts. And that is really exciting.
I've wanted to share that data for years, but just couldn't
because of how complicated it would have been to create and
manage all of those pages. Now it's so much easier.
You can check that out over at podcastindustryinsights.com and
just click on that Apple Podcast categories link there.
Or if you're on the Apple Podcast page, under the category
section, there's a link to look at the individual categories, and
you can switch your categories and the charts nicely update to
show you the information from that category.
And it's really cool.
Another really cool thing is Podcasting 2, and I'm deeply
involved with Podcasting 2. I'm a big fan of that.
I hope you know that by now.
I am an evangelist in many ways for Podcasting 2.
I'm really excited about what's being built inside of Podcasting
2.
And for a little while, I've been tracking the feature adoption
for that.
And I don't think I've mentioned that for a while that you could
see that.
So if you go to podcastindustryinsights.com and click on
Podcasting 2, you'll be able to see how these particular
features, like the transcripts and chapters and value tag and
some of these other features have grown over time and been
adopted over time.
Some of them track the podcast level, and some of them even track
at the episode level.
Like, how many episodes are there out there now with transcripts
or chapters versus how many podcasts have this feature out there.
That's at podcastindustryinsights.com.
And the other thing that you might be seeing this data, you might
think, this is really cool. I'd love to share this out.
Let me try and take a screenshot of this, or I'd like to get this
on a slide, or try and copy this into a chart so I can use it in
a presentation, or display it in a video, or share it out on
Instagram, or x, or Facebook, or whatever like that.
I made that now a whole lot easier for you.
That there's now a feature next to every chart.
There's a button in the upper right corner among the other
buttons that let you change from monthly to daily or change the
time range that you're looking at, like year to date, the last 30
days, or multiple years of history, you can now also, with 1
click, download an image of that chart, and it will download in
16 by 9 ratio in 4 k resolution, and it has a nice heading.
If you're looking at the category section, it names the category
on the slide. It displays the chart really big.
It uses the background color that you're looking at the same way
that you would see it, but it's designed for a slide layout.
And it even has the credit there on the slides.
You don't have to worry about trying to copy and paste that onto
the slide if you want to quote from my stats in a presentation or
share that out. It's on there too already for you.
So it makes it super convenient for you to go there any day and
download the image for any of these charts and share them
wherever you want to. And I'd love for you to do that.
You're going to be seeing me do that more often too now that
that's available.
That's something I've wanted to do for years also is to make it
easier so people wouldn't have to try and screenshot the chart,
but you can just download the image.
And I mentioned that it uses the background color.
Like for Apple Podcast, it's a purple background color.
For Podcast Index, it's a red background color.
For YouTube, it's a red background.
The new Podcast Industry insights.com also supports light mode
and dark mode.
So if you're in light mode, the images that you download will
have a light background color and dark foreground.
If you're in dark mode, then the images you download will have
that darker branded color background with a light foreground.
And I love how that works.
This is the thing that I do now for any of the new sites and apps
that I build.
I am always thinking this needs to work in light mode and dark
mode. I'm a dark mode person myself.
I love everything to be in dark mode, but I know that not
everyone prefers dark mode.
Some people, I don't know why, prefer light mode.
I'm not going to call them names, but you can get that in the
images and in the website.
So I'd love for you to check out podcastindustryinsights.com.
Yes.
This whole episode was a commercial for a free website that I
would love for you to use as a resource. You can quote from it.
You can download the images, share those images, link to the
charts, reference that.
As long as you just give me credit, then I provide in there just
an example of how that you can give that credit, and that's very
simple too.
But I'd love for you to share that information out there with
others. So go to podcastindustryinsights.com.
I've said that URL way too many times in this episode.
But go to there and download those images. Share them.
Check out the stats.
Look at the genres and the categories to see what is your actual
competition inside your primary podcast genre, whatever that is.
See how many of those podcasts are still active.
Get more insight this way.
And what I really hope is that this will be inspirational to you.
That if you are podcasting and you're thinking, how am I going to
stand out among the millions of other podcasts out there?
Well, it's actually only a few 100,000 that have published an
episode within the last 90 days.
It's an even smaller number who have published an episode within
the last 7 days.
And then it's an even smaller number, and this is now so much
easier to see, of podcasts in your primary category that have
published an episode in the last 90 days.
That's closer to how many other podcasts you're competing with.
Not millions.
Maybe it's a few thousand or a few 100, or maybe it's even in the
tens instead. Check it out over at podcastindustryinsights.com.
Completely free to use.
If you would like to donate, please reach out to me and let me
know.
There will be a link on the site that you can email to either
offer a donation or advertise if you want to on the site, but the
resource is free to use, and I intend to keep it that way.
So check it out. Podcast industryinsights.com.
Special thanks to Brian Insmeter from toptieraudio.com who
streamed 1,303 total Satoshis across my previous several
episodes.
And thanks to Chad f who sent 1000 Satoshis and said in in
response to my previous episode giving a sort of introduction
about OpenClaw.
He said, I ran OpenClaw for a few weeks, but uninstalled it
because it burns through tokens way too fast, And I can do what I
need with Cloud Code and GitHub actions.
That's awesome that you can do that, Chad.
I'm really glad that you are able to do that.
And if you have some things that are working really well for you,
especially podcasting related, please share that in an upcoming
episode.
I want to talk more about what you can do and how you can do
things with OpenClaw.
Not just saying, oh, you can make a whole team run your podcast
for you. Now buy my course. No.
I want to actually share the prompts, link to the resources, and
the skills, and such.
So that if you want to try OpenClaw or a similar kind of agentic
AI service, that you'll be able to do that.
So please send that feedback if you have any of those, and
especially the text of your prompts or commands and such.
Send that through podcastfeedback.com/audacity.
And I'd love to include that in an upcoming episode since my
episode about OpenClaw was really just an introduction of some
things to think about before you use OpenClaw. It's not all bad.
It doesn't have to be all scary.
I want to do an episode soon about what you can do and how you
can do it for OpenClaw.
So send me that feedback, podcast feedback dot com slash
audacity.
Now that I've given you some of the guts, taught you some of the
tools, and shown you some of the statistics, it's time for you to
go start and grow your own podcast for passion and profit.
I'm Daniel J.
Lewis from theaudacitytopodcast.com and creator of
podcastindustryinsights.com. Thanks for listening.