How to create a hit podcast: Launch years ago

There’s bad news for anyone trying to create a new hit podcast: new research shows that the podcast charts are dominated by shows that launched years ago…

Bloomberg cites data showing that no show created in the past two years has made it into the top 10.

Every new show has a smaller audience than its predecessors […] While the overall audience for podcasting expands, the audience for individual new shows is shrinking across the board.

None of the 10 most popular podcasts in the U.S. last year debuted in the last couple years, according to Edison Research. They are an average of more than 7 years old, and three of the top five are more than a decade old. (“The Joe Rogan Experience,” “This American Life” and “Stuff You Should Know.”) Only a few podcasts in the top 50 (“SmartLess,” “The Michelle Obama Podcast,” “Frenemies”) are less than two years old. And none of them are in the top 25 […]

Pretty much everyone agrees on the reason. There are more podcasts than ever before. Spotify hosts more than 3 million podcasts, up from a few hundred thousand just a few years ago. While the vast majority of those new shows are either defunct or have minuscule audiences, there are still way more podcasts than there were just a few years ago.

The number of new podcasts has grown more quickly than the podcast audience, and so the number of listeners per show is going down. 

Indeed, launching a podcast seemed to be so popular during lockdown that it created a whole new meme.

The piece says Apple has made things even tougher for new shows.

Discovering new shows is harder than ever as a result. We rely on recommendations, algorithms and word of mouth to guide us. While year-end lists of the best podcasts can boost the audience for a show, podcasting platforms need to do a better job of guiding listeners. (Most companies used to rely on Apple for promotion, but that’s trickier now that Apple wants to push shows that participate in its subscription program.)

The top 10 podcasts for the 12 months from Q4 2020 to Q3 2021 were:

1. The Joe Rogan Experience
2. The Daily
3. Crime Junkie
4. This American Life
5. Stuff You Should Know
6. My Favorite Murder
7. Pod Save America
8. Serial
9. Office Ladies
10. Call Her Daddy

You can see the full top 50 in the Edison report, and you can check out all the 9to5 podcasts here.

Photo: Jonathan Farber/Unsplash