Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2024/01/16/a-small-change-at-apple-reveals-how-small-podcastings-audience-really-is.html
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Not sure i entirely buy it. I generally like to bank my episodes and then binge listen to it until i’m caught up, and while i’m waiting for those eps to pile up i start to listen to other podcasts i’m behind on. Not sure this is everyone’s M.O. but i do this for listening to podcasts and reading manga.
It’s possible the audience might be smaller than what you see at face value but i don’t think that’s truly the whole story.
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I guess it was all built on hot air and bad statistics.
Welcome to the digital age!
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Five episodes in two weeks? Plenty of podcasts don’t release that much content to begin with. How can you listen to more content than exists?
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Same here. I binge podcasts primarily on roadtrips that occur every month or so.
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Wonder how many are like me, I don’t use a podcasting app, instead I get a RSS feed and the download directly and play them later on. Several I play at night and fall asleep to.
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Advertisers trying to figure out how to not pay for ads that don’t get heard?
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It sounded to me like, if you have downloaded five episodes and don’t listen to that podcast at all for a period of two weeks, the app won’t automatically download newer episodes beyond those five until you do.
Sort of tangentially-related, but I wish more things were like podcasts: the podcasts themselves are published somehow/somewhere, and you can choose from any number of apps to curate and play them.
I would dearly love for restaurants (fast food in-person coupons, say) and restaurant delivery (a la SkipTheDishes, DoorDash, UberEats, etc.) to have defined protocols and message/information standards, so that I could pick a single app — and therefore UI — to manage all of the functions that now seem to be spread across and are proprietary to any number of terrible single-function apps.
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I’m having trouble parsing what’s going on here. When the article says “Apple would automatically download every show in between”, does it mean that the Apple podcast app automatically downloaded shows? And how are downloads quantified? My understanding is that hosting is distributed, so somehow you’d have to aggregate download counts from all hosts? I guess I’m missing a lot of the mechanics.
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To make matters worse/better, as podcatcher apps have been dying pretty quickly lately (stitcher died last fall, Google Podcasts will die next month), I think that apple’s shares of the podcast market will increase. Also telling since the apple’s platform is the one of the few standardized places that casters can turn to for reviews of their work.
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People set their podcast apps to auto-download?
I just stream them. I only (manually) download episodes before a big plane ride or something similar.
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Yes I do,
Now that Google’s Podcast app is on deaths door, I was forced to find something that worked.
Turns out the app Pocket Casts has worked well for me.
My mode of use is this. I have about 8 podcasts I’m subscribed to. Now that this app actually works better for me, while on wifi it will auto download and queue up new episodes. Off wifi, only queue and then download when I’m back on wifi.
I listen mostly when walking to pick up kids from school or after dropping them off. Also while working or doing long road trips.
ADHD being what it is, things like this that prepare themselves to be used on demand let me not have to try to remember to download a bunch to get caught up, and not have to worry that I’ve missed some or something else.
Just the way that has turned out to work better for me,
all other mileages will vary. 
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I would assume this is 100% dependent on your phone data plan. When I was on a more limited plan, I would always download ahead of time. Not that I’m on an unlimited data plan, I stream unless I’m headed for a plane. That “stream” still downloads, just only the episode being played.
The bigger question to me was, people still use the Apple Podcasts app?
Long time Overcast user. I will likely never reach the end of my smart playlist. Time sensitive stuff at the front, the rest at the bottom. Episode keep limits set, so I’ll just miss stuff that’s too old instead of being 20 episodes behind.
Has the Apple Podcasts app improved enough to be worth using?
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Indeed. But the big internet companies all hate interoperability because it would diminish the power of their monopolies. Someone should write a book about this ;]
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The smaller audiences for podcasting aren’t really a problem. Rather than think of podcasting as an alternative to Mass Market news/media programs, it’s more like an alternative to AM radio shows that cover specific subject areas.
Yes, each podcast reaches a smaller audience, but they serve that audience well. Big media is serving a larger, less involved audience poorly.
It stinks that that pays much better, but selling corn syrup pays better than cane sugar, selling crap, autotuned, pretty teen pop songs pays better than good music, making crappy remakes and sequels of crappy movies pays better than truly good filmmaking.
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from what i understand, almost every app uses apple’s directory. so they have a good idea of subscriptions across all apps regardless of platform
( ive been using pocket cast on android, and like it well enough )
the downside of that is the podcaster won’t get credit for your regular listening, so their ad payouts will be lower. ( not as big a deal if you patreon or similar of course )
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I use Pocket Casts as well. I am subscribed to 146 podcasts. I don’t think downloading them all would make much sense.
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Does the app need to ping Apple in order to subscribe? I thought the directory was just a pointer to where the podcast was hosted and subscription happens within the app. So Apple might know when someone is looking up a podcast, but how would they know when someone is subscribing?
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