How Many Podcasts Are There, And Why Is The Biggest Number Not The Best Number?

Two different numbers around podcasting have caught my attention.

The first comes from Spotify, with an alert that suggests it has 5,290,396 podcasts and “you should dig deep and discover yours.” Given Spotify’s approach to podcasting is to ignore the open nature of podcasting, to prevent any exporting of individual podcast feeds or an OPML export of your own subscriptions, I’d argue that number is too high… by around 5,290,396.

Spotify has earmarked rather a lot of money to try and dominate the podcasting space and crowd out as many of the smaller players as possible. But to have five and a quarter million shows? Is that possible?

The second number comes from Amplifi. It’s a follow up to its 2021 research on how many podcasts are active – defined as a podcast with at least ten episodes and at least one episode published in the last seven days. This suggests there are 155,764 active podcasts in July 2022.

With over four million podcasts examined (Aplifi used data from The Podcast Index) you can probably stretch the number out to Spotify’s five million figure using additional libraries and directories. But the two numbers are trying to set different narratives. Spotify’s is clear; it needs to justify a planned $1 billion investment into its episodic audio space and the ability to not only make back that investment but provide a financial return.

Amplifi’s number is a more realistic look at the podcasting space and gives a better view of the ecosystem. 155,000 is still a huge amount of content being pushed out by creators around the world. To give some context to that, according to Variety the US TV market had 559 scripted shows in production during all of 2021. Scale that up to the rest of the world and podcasting is probably still a larger space by an order of magnitude.

Podcasting is a huge space, packed with creativity, innovation, and emotion. Once you have some context the idea of maximising the number so you can shout out “millions!” feels embarrassing. The true number is impressive enough to stand on its own.