Who doesn’t love listening to an excellent podcast, proper? Whether or not you’re downloading The Day by day, Serial Killers, Stuff You Ought to Know, The Joe Rogan Expertise, or the hundreds of different accessible podcasts, it appears there are simply so many good podcasts to select from. And over the previous a number of years, the variety of subscribers listening to many of those common podcasts and others has continued to develop and develop.
Proper?
Effectively, though most of that might be true, what may not be correct is how many listeners have been downloading and listening in to podcasts. Or, on the very least, it’s not clear if the variety of listeners or subscribers is as giant as many podcasters imagine them to be, which is a situation that might be devastating to these podcasters hoping to monetize through promoting.
So, what occurred? Why are the numbers in query now?
Based on a latest story in Semafor, it was a technical shift: This previous September, when Apple launched iOS 17, the replace included an “enchancment” in the way in which computerized downloads are dealt with.
In Apple’s Replace to Automated Downloads discover for the Apple Podcasts app, it mentioned, “Earlier than iOS 17, when a listener would unpause computerized downloads, the system would robotically obtain all unplayed episodes. With iOS 17, Apple Podcasts is not going to obtain earlier episodes and can resume robotically downloading new episodes.”
Ought to Apple be obligated to inform the podcast trade when it adjustments how listeners are calculated?
However when Apple applied this transformation in iOS 17, it “quietly tightened its reporting of how many individuals take heed to podcasts….” In doing so, Semafor mentioned that technical change is “sending shock waves via an embattled audio trade nonetheless reeling from the top of the COVID-era manufacturing bubble.”
The Semafor story gave two examples of how podcasts benefitted below “the previous guidelines,” or earlier than Apple launched iOS 17. Within the first instance, “A consumer who listened to a present like The New York Occasions’ The Day by day a number of instances, subscribed, however stopped listening would proceed to depend as a obtain indefinitely.” Within the second instance, “for individuals who listened to a present, dropped off for some time, however began listening once more later, Apple would robotically obtain each present in between.” In each instances, Semafor mentioned such a course of resulted in driving up “massive obtain numbers, an important metric for advert gross sales and an indication of the huge attain of podcasts as a medium.”
However since Apple launched iOS 17 this previous September, the variety of listeners the Apple Podcasts platform reported have been considerably decrease. The truth is, Semafor reported that by and enormous, “long-running reveals that publish often have been hit significantly exhausting.” Semafor additionally mentioned, “…The Day by day and Dateline each publicly touted reaching over a billion whole downloads. However representatives for these reveals wouldn’t say if these numbers or different spectacular every day or weekly obtain stats are nonetheless correct, although a number of of the most important podcasts acknowledged privately to Semafor that they’d seen noticeable declines…. One other well-known podcaster and govt mentioned for some reveals, the decline in downloads was as excessive as 40%.”
In the mean time, it is not clear how the change has affected or will proceed to have an effect on the podcast trade. Some counsel it was a mandatory change, though maybe not in the way in which Apple applied it. However in the mean time, not many are brazenly discussing it. Semafor notes that the preferred podcasts aren’t discussing the platform change, which is likely to be an indication that “many massive reveals aren’t able to admit how a lot their audiences have shrunk.”
