The number of "real podcasts" on Apple is 880,000 and not two million, as per an investigation by Amplifi Media's Steven Goldstein and Podnews' James Cridland. The article defines a "real podcast" as having published at least four episodes. Earlier this month, Apple Podcasts became home to more than 2 million podcasts, as reported by Daniel J. Lewis' Podcast Industry Insights. 

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• In Lewis' report, he states that 62% of shows are "inactive," meaning they have not posted an episode in the past 90 days. 
• Goldstein and Cridland build from that hypothesis, finding "many titles come from some of the free-forever podcast hosts, including  Spotify’s Anchor." 
• A quarter of the two million podcasts on Apple have "produced just a single episode." Digging deeper reveals that 44% of podcasts have three or fewer episodes while 36% have produced 10 or more. 

On podcast hosting platform Buzzsprout, Spotify was marginally ahead of Apple in podcast downloads last month. The audio streaming app was at 29.4%, while Apple Podcasts was at 29.3%. 

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• When Buzzsprout first started publishing these stats in October 2020, 47% of the downloads were attributed to Apple, while Spotify was at just 24.4%. 
• Total monthly downloads have grown from roughly 64 million in October to 85 million in March.
• Earlier this month, eMarketer forecasted that Spotify's U.S. podcast listenership would overtake Apple's. We previously covered this in detail.
• Refresher:
  • From making "The Joe Rogan Experience" exclusive to its acquisition of advertising platform Megaphone, we rounded up all Spotify's power-up moves in 2020 in a special issue.

Facebook is beta testing an audio app called Hotline in the U.S. Gizmodo describes it as a "love child between Instagram Live and Clubhouse;" a mix of voice chatting, Q&A, and audio-only social media.

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• TechCrunch reports that the app will "look familiar" to users of other audio social networks such as Clubhouse or Twitter Spaces. 
• One difference between Hotline and Clubhouse is that the listeners' section will be divided into those "who are just watching the event" and those "who are asking questions." Users will also be able to upvote and downvote others' questions. 
• Hosts will be able to moderate the experience and "remove inappropriate questions from the queue." In the beta testing phase, Facebook employees will moderate the events. 
• The team developing this app is led by Eric Hazzard, who created the "positivity-focused" Q&A app tbh, which was acquired by Facebook in 2017.
• Real estate investor Nick Huber livestreamed a video of himself testing out the product. (This video is only available in the U.S.) 

PODS ON THE BLOCK 

• "The Line" is a new Apple original true crime podcast that tells the story of Eddie Gallagher, a Navy SEAL chief whose team accused him of murder. The six-part audio series centers around the question "did a Navy SEAL cross the line in Iraq?" Apple TV will release a documentary on the same subject in Fall 2021. 
• "This Is Uncomfortable," a show about how "money messes with [life]," is back for season two. The new season promises a closer look at ways in which "we're all getting scammed," from stolen identities to the "ultimate scam:" health care. The first episode is out now. 
• The new season of "How's Work?" features couples' therapist Esther Perel on the "new etiquettes" of a work-from-home environment. Through conversations with people in difficult jobs, from journalists to doctors, Perel "brings a new perspective to the invisible forces that shape workplace dynamics." 
• "Oh My Dog" is a podcast that features "dogs and their people: true love and other stories." The latest episode tells the tale of a dachshund called Sadie, journalist Neil Sandell, and the evolution of dogs.
• "Rad or Sad" is an independent podcast hosted by Zach and Lexi who decide if new and old things in our online and offline communities are "rad or sad." I particularly enjoyed the episode on Reddit's "Am I The A**hole" sub-reddit. 

QUICK HITS

• Keep these things in mind to ensure reliability and professionalism when connecting to a large, remote audience.*
• "On Air Fest," a festival "exploring storytelling and creativity in sound" through conversations with podcasters has begun. The livestream started earlier today and will go on until Sunday. Register and view the livestream here. 
• Pacific Content's Dan Misener shares what the "most crowded categories" on Apple Podcasts are currently; Religion & Spirituality tops the list, followed by Society & Culture. 
• Edison Research's SVP Tom Webster takes a closer look at podcasting data: "podcasting currently converts 68% of its monthly listeners to weekly listeners." This implies that podcasting as a medium "isn't mature" and we have not yet reached "peak podcasting." 
• Google is now testing personalized episode recommendations on Google Podcasts. 
• In the U.K., Podcast Radio is a radio station that airs podcasts around the clock.
• You don’t need a PhD in molecular biology to understand the investment potential of this scientific breakthrough.*

*This is sponsored content.