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.
More:
- 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.