Are Apple's iTunes Podcasts Charts Skewed Favoring Media Organizations?

In late 2017, I looked at a measure of podcasting’s reach among listeners to any kind of audio programming, Edison Research’s “Share Of Ear,” which had concluded that podcasting was getting just 3% of all audio listeners’ time. Edison’s sister measurement program, “Infinite Dial,” breaks down podcast listening habits.

I’ll revisit podcasting’s growth potential from another perspective, with some expert insight, in my next entry, but first let’s look at the issue of iTunes podcast rankings and whether they are now skewed toward podcasts that are backed by bigger media organizations.

The “Risk!” podcast, which features unique storytelling, mostly by comedians or comedy performers, is produced independently of any large media organization. It debuted in 2009, and achieved a run on the iTunes top 100 podcasts charts that began in February 2014 and ended in August 2016. At the time of its debut, there were about 250,000 podcasts in existence that could be tabulated for the iTunes chart, estimates Kevin Allison, creator and host of “Risk!”

The number of podcasts in existence now stands at about 500,000, according to Rob Walch, host of the “PodCast411” podcast and vice president of podcaster relations at Libsyn, a podcast publishing, hosting and delivery service that handles about 25,000 podcasts for both independents and media organizations. So there’s more competition for those top spots, and podcast networks such as Gimlet, Panoply and Earwolf or public radio spinoffs are more likely than independent podcasters to have marketing budgets to reach more listeners and get ranked on the iTunes chart.

“It’s not that [our] show has deteriorated,” says Allison, talking about the challenge of an ever-more crowded podcasting field. “The show is better than ever. It’s because we don’t have thousands of dollars to throw at marketing and to connecting us to business-to-business this-and-that. We have a tiny staff. We don’t have a huge money machine of some media corporation behind us.”

Independent podcasts like “Risk!” rely on their own “gumption,” as Allison puts it, and have to constantly beat the drum to promote themselves. “You have to show up places in person as much as humanly possible,” he says. “Just like a politician, shaking people’s hands, and telling them, ‘you have to listen to my podcast’ or ‘come be on my podcast.’” That includes, but is not exclusive to, social media outreach.

Walch, on the other hand, does not see organizational backing as an absolute pre-requisite for being on the iTunes top 100 podcasts list. “The majority of shows [on the list] are indie podcasters,” he says, adding that network or public radio podcasts make up less than 2% of all podcasts overall.

A cursory look at this week’s top 100, as compiled by itunescharts.net, finds a mix of independents and affiliated shows close to 50-50. “The Joe Rogan Experience,” which Walch emphasizes as a prime example of a successful independent show, ranked 3^rd on February 20 (itunescharts.net compiles charts daily but there is a lag in releasing results). The New York Times, WNYC, NPR, PodcastOne, Vox and Slate have shows on the list (amounting to much more than 2% but probably less than 10% of the list), yet most of the list could fairly be called independent podcasts, albeit of different sizes and scales.

Circling back to that “Share Of Ear” measurement – if podcasting makes up such a small part of audio entertainment, organizationally-backed podcasts would have an audience that is quite small. Collect up all the independent, unaffiliated shows, and that’s where the medium’s reach or power may reside.

Next time: A look at iTunes versus Android in achieving podcasting’s maximum reach possibilities.

Podcast of the Moment:

Risk! “Outta Place,” February 8, 2012. Writing the above entry sent me far back into the Risk! archives for this episode, in which Ben Garant and Kerri Kenney-Silver, both colleagues of host Kevin Allison, when they were in the State sketch comedy group, talk about misadventures related to travel. Garant tells about being on the road hanging out with heavy drug users in Wyoming, and Kenney-Silver talks about an unwanted trip to “Burning Man.”