Apple has quietly tightened its reporting on how many people listen to podcasts, sending shockwaves through a beleaguered audio industry still reeling from the end of the coronavirus-era production bubble.
Apple wrote in a blog post that the shift was technical: The dominant audio streaming platform began stopping automatic downloading for users who haven’t listened to five episodes of a show in the past two weeks.
But while a few users have noticed the shift, some of the world’s biggest podcasts have seen their official listener numbers plummet. Long-running shows that are syndicated frequently have been hit hard. User who listened to a show like The New York Times newspaper Subscribed multiple times, but stopping listening will continue to be considered a download indefinitely. Even better under the old rules: For people who listened to a show, dropped out for a while, but started listening again later, Apple would automatically download every show in between. This ranking generated significant download numbers, an important measure of ad sales and a sign of the widespread popularity of podcasting as a medium.
For example, newspaper And Date line Both were publicly promoted Billion total downloads. But representatives for those shows wouldn’t say whether those numbers or other impressive daily or weekly download statistics are still accurate, though several of the biggest podcasts privately admitted to Semafor that they’ve seen noticeable declines, and they’re still trying to determine the actual size of downloads. . Their audience after the change.
This shift came without warning. Audio people at The New York Times, NPR and other major publishers told Semafor they were surprised by the change made in September, which had been years in the making but came without advance warning from Apple. One podcast network told Semafor that it has seen its downloads drop between single digits and low double digits depending on the show. Another well-known executive and director said the drop in downloads reached 40% for some shows.
“Almost every regularly published podcast has gotten a massive haircut,” said one podcast industry insider.