Apple has quietly stepped up its reporting on the number of people listening to podcasts, sending shockwaves through the beleaguered audio industry still reeling from the end of the coronavirus-era production bubble. There is.
Apple wrote in a blog post that the change was technical. The dominant podcasting platform has begun turning off automatic downloads for users who haven’t listened to his five episodes of the show in the past two weeks.
But while few users noticed the change, some of the world’s biggest podcasts saw their official listener numbers drop significantly. Long-running programs that air frequently were particularly hard hit.Users who listened to shows like The New York Times The Daily Even if you subscribe several times and then stop listening, it will continue to count as a download indefinitely. It was even better under the old rules. For people who listened to a show, stopped for a while, and then started listening again later, Apple was automatically downloading all the shows in between. This arrangement significantly increased downloads, a key metric for advertising sales, and demonstrated the broad reach of podcasts as a medium.
for example, The Daily and international date line Both are publicly advertised as achievable 1 billion total downloads. But while representatives of these shows wouldn’t say whether these numbers or other daily or weekly download statistics are still accurate, some of the biggest podcasts have seen noticeable declines. He privately admitted to Semafor that he was still trying to figure out the actual number of downloads. Audience after change.
This change occurred immediately and without warning. Audio people at The New York Times, NPR and other major publishers were surprised by the September changes, which had been years in the making and came without prior warning from Apple. he told Semafor. One podcast network told Semafor that downloads were down in the single digits to low double digits for some shows. Another prominent podcaster and executive said some shows have seen downloads drop as much as 40%.
“Almost every podcast we publish on a regular basis has taken a major haircut,” said one podcast industry insider.