Update on Spotify plays. Remember that release? Yeah. Plus, they are making podcasts more prominent in a new following. Feed. New resource page on podcast artwork from Apple Podcasts for creators. Spammers creating bogus audio content about drugs? Whoa. the new weekly top podcast show chart on YouTube. And our stats section is all about an estimate of podcasts that get over 10,000 downloads per month.
Hello, I'm Elsie Escobar, Director of Community and Content for Libsyn, and this is Episode 294 of The Feed, the official Libsyn podcast, the podcast that takes it. Beyond how to podcast into keeping you podcasting with podcasting tips and information for the everyday podcaster and taking you inside Libsyn. Now, if you are starting a podcast or simply.
looking to find a home for your podcast, use the code THEFEED, all one word, to get up to two months free. Now, if you would like to get featured on the show, please send in your 30-second promo. How do you do it? You attach it to an email and you send it over to thefeedatlipson.com. If you don't have a promo, but you want your voice on the show, you can ask us a question or add to the conversation that you hear in an episode.
Send us voice feedback. You can call us 412-573-1934 or you can use SpeakPipe at speakpipe.com slash the feed. Everything is done via email. It is first come, first served. with a dash of if we get to it, if it fits, or oh no, we have to push it to the next episode. And now on to our main conversation with Rob Walsh, VP of Podcaster Relations at Libsyn, as well as my co-host. Are you ready? Let's go. Hello, Rob.
Good generic time of the day, Elsie. How are you doing? Here we are. We're almost, are we going to be, no, we're almost in June. Can you believe that? Six months into 2025. By the time people hear this, it will be June. Will it be? Yes. Is it? This is going to be June. It is going to be June. It's already June. People, it's June. Good Lord. We're recording May 29th. Yes, we're recording May 29th as typical normal Thursday before. Oh, my God. All right. Anyway.
Holy monkeys, do we have an update for you all about the whole, remember the Spotify conversation that we had last time? And I did add a little bit to the intro, by the way, Rob. I did. kind of record the sort of change, the amendment. It's as if it never happened. So just in case you want to catch up, you can listen to our past episode, episode 293, where Spotify announced that they were going to disclose.
all of your Spotify plays for everybody to see. And a lot of podcasters got very upset by this because they didn't want anybody to be looking at their business. Without consent. So Spotify was shocked by this whole pushback and they did amend. what they were going to be putting out. And they decided to only allow, oh my gosh, if your episode hits 50,000 plays.
On an individual episode, not all your episodes combined. Correct. Not all time, not in a month, but for an individual episode, once that episode gets to 50K. forget what your other episodes have done, then you can get a badge for that episode. Now, let's put that in perspective. To get 250K.
You know, we talk about the median and mean numbers on the show in the last episode. You know, we were talking about you're in the top 1% if you're greater than 30K. And to get to 50K, basically putting you close to the top half a percent. And if Spotify is typically 20% of downloads, that means you're like the 0.1% of shows are going to hit 50K in...
maybe 0.2%. So, you know, we're looking at one or two shows out of a thousand are going to get to that level. It's like a needle in a haystack. If you find this, it's like finding the hidden badge that when you walk around the Disney park, there's certain badges that only one out of a thousand people have the workers that you want to trade for. It's like that.
I mean, it's a lottery. And so it's not going to impact almost any podcaster. So the good news is for all the podcasters that were concerned. that it was going to make their podcast look bad compared to others, don't worry about it because no one's going to see these badges. You look for Rogan. You look for... Lex Friedman, look for Hardcore History. You'll find it. But outside of that, no, not going to be there. I'm going to put a link to the page, by the way, which is the same page.
as it was before, but they did put a little like blurb at the top where they updated it on the 16th of May, which was the day after we recorded. And of course, you can still see all of your... precise numbers according to them in your of course your private dashboards and all of that stuff but in terms of the front part you can get a 50k badge you can get a hundred K badge and a million K badge. So there, so there you have it. But the interesting thing is that they kind of scrubbed.
the original release sort of out of all the places because then they just sort of removed the this is coming kind of a thing and they just have this now so this is the message so if you didn't If for some reason you start podcasting, you know, in six months and you're, you won't ever know what these, it was a blurb. Is that how you say it? A blip, not blurb, a blip. In the universe, you will never know.
That at one time, all your stats had the possibility of being seen publicly. They rewrote history. Yeah. Oh, my God. But we also had some more another release this time from Apple Podcasts. OK, so before we talk about Apple Podcasts, do we want to talk about what's written at the top of that page first? You mean the Spotify page? No, the Apple podcast page. Before we talk about the design stuff. Oh, yes. Okay. So.
Let's go ahead. And so we're talking about this page, podcasters.apple.com slash design. Okay. There was a release that I got. You know, I caught and I was like, oh, there's a new release. And I tapped through and I noticed that at the top of this new podcasters page, this support page. There's new language at the top of the page that says Apple Podcasts for creators. So, Ted, were we missing this all along or is this a new change, the for creators?
You know, before, everything always said for podcasters. So now it says Apple Podcasts for Creators. This is kind of along the lines of how Spotify changed, right? It used to be... podcasters.spotify.com, but now it's creators.spotify.com. As a matter of fact, if you go to podcasters.spotify.com, it redirects to creators.spotify.com. Yeah. So, Apple, are you following Spotify's lead on this as well?
Did we miss this? Is this brand new or has this been this way for a while? And Elsie and I were completely oblivious to this. I mean, that was the first time that I've noticed it. Again, I have no idea when and if that subtly changed. The URL still says podcasters.apple.com. I don't know if it's going to change at any time. from that URL, but we'll keep an eye out on that. But alas, that is the thing that we see now. But given that...
There's a new page or maybe an updated page because I actually don't remember this either. But at podcasters.apple.com slash design. The top part of the page just says, take the guesswork out of artwork. You covered with design resources for cover art, episode art and more. And it's a really... easy to navigate, beautifully aligned page here where you can find everything very simply on how to find everything that you need for. creating the best looking artwork as possible. So they have...
a little artwork guide at the top that is like artwork 101, a link through to an article for that. Then it has access to template library. It has the rules. It has artwork rules on what you can't and cannot do with podcast art. And it's also with reviewing some artwork policies. All of this is clicked through very easily. And then it also provides more information at the bottom of the page about hosting guest images, marketing resources.
And they also have information about Canva, which is what brings me back to the next part here where... Right at the top of the page, before we go to the Canva of it all, there is an artwork 101 link. And that one goes over to podcasters.apple.com slash artwork dash guide. And when you go to that page. It really breaks down. This is one of the things I thought this was beautifully laid out, too. It lays out all of the different areas in which your artwork, your show artwork would show up within.
Apple podcasts, because there are many different parts of it, especially if you are either going to be for different situations, if you're being featured. If you happen to open up like subscriptions within Apple Podcasts. Or if you have a network, there's all of these different areas that your artwork is going to be featured. And this breaks it down for you so that you're able to see, oh, I see when I have chapter art.
It's going to show up like this. If I have a show hero page, it gives you exactly what that is. Channel artwork, it shows you where that's going to show up. in all the different channels. And so you'll start to learn the language around that and also show where it's going to show up, which is really a fantastic source. Now, they did forget one thing in the specs. Oh. Less than 500 kilobytes for the file size.
Apple refuses to put that in there, but we see it when there's a slowdown in updates of podcasts from time to time. It's because the artwork is 8 meg, 6 meg, 4 meg, large. Episode and show-level artwork can randomly cause your show to delay in publishing in Apple Podcasts. And we've seen this over the years. And simply changing the artwork is the only thing we do. And then all of a sudden, magically, the show starts working.
So just make sure whenever you're doing any changes to your show level artwork, two things that they didn't mention the other one was one, keep your file size under. 500 kilobytes. Two, when you change your show level artwork, change the file name. If it was logo.jpg, the next one should be logo2.jpg, logo3.jpg, logo4. Don't have the same file name as previous.
artwork because Apple won't know that it's updated and it won't update in their system. So make sure you change the file name and make sure the file size is under 500 kilobytes. Two additional specs to go along with everything else that Apple put in there, which was great.
And many of the things we've talked about over the years about, you know, don't have your show title in the bottom 15% of your artwork. They show why in some of those images. Keep your show title up above the top 85% of the artwork. Yeah, it looks great. And the other addition to this also is their partnership with Canva. And there's a link straight through that where...
If you click through over to the Canva page, because it is linked through there if you want to check that out as well, it has sort of pre-crafted templates that are super easy. to edit and adjust and personalize for your podcast. It has all the steps. You know, choose the artwork, customize the design, check the safety zones, which they've already added in there for you so you're able to see it. And then you export it out. It's really nice to be able to see.
all the different ways in which you can create easily podcast artwork and personalize it. They also have the other graphics that go along with your podcast, like your channel icon, your channel logo, the subscription icons, and the episode artwork. So they have all of that stuff outlined there as well. So you're able to see all of that.
It's just a really wonderful execution. Hats off to them because, you know, I mentioned, too, that Apple, as you know, we've been saying this on the show for so many years. They are so visually focused.
The aesthetic and what people see within the entire ecosystem of Apple overall is a very clean look. They care about... the way things look and graphic design is not an easy thing when you've never done that before and you know just because you happen to be an incredible audio producer, or you happen to be a super amazing podcast host.
somebody who has hosted many things and you have a talented actor, it doesn't necessarily mean that you are also an amazing visual designer. And this makes it really easy. So I really love it. You will not get featured if your artwork is not pretty. It is that simple. I mean, this goes back to when Adam Carolla launched his podcast way back when the Apple team.
reached out to me and said, do you know anyone there? We want to feature his podcast, but his artwork is just so darn ugly. We can't feature it. And I always say to people, if he couldn't get featured with bad artwork. You will not get featured with bad artwork, period. End of story. And Apple has always, for 18, 19 years, always had that aesthetic. You have to be pretty artwork-wise to get featured.
And the thing is, there are a lot of places where the graphics go on a website and or an app. And it is challenging to be able to scale things up. That's another thing that's...
kind of hard for a lot of the layperson. If you're really into graphic design, of course, you know all of these different things. But for a lot of podcasters, They've never really had to deal in the same way that a lot of podcasters have never really truly had to deal with audio overall and maybe are starting to learn the difference between WAV files and MP3 files, what's compressed, what's not.
Same thing with artwork as well that has different types of specs. They look different at different sizes. And especially with TVs coming into the mix now when people are. seeing a lot of this stuff on big giant TVs. Your artwork needs to be able to scale up and down and all of this stuff. So this actually makes it easier for you to be able to see that. And one thing that I really loved about the Canva page too is
they do talk very much about your artwork for your actual show in all of the different ways. But if you scroll down the page to... They do have other ways, like they have social media posts added to there. They also have story, which is, again, social posts, like the vertical story type posts. And they even have ads for your show. They have a little like a way in which you can put a little tiny leaderboard.
ad in different places and they're already pre-crafted with the Apple Podcasts little logo added to the mix so that you're able to create graphics that are promoting your podcast that are above and beyond having just the general show graphics. over there too. So it just gives you an opportunity to have a place to start with because I know that's challenging too, just that first step. They provide you with the first step. You are then able to personalize according to what you need.
So it's very, I like it. Very cool. Good for you guys. Good for you, Apple Podcasts and Canva. Nicely done. Nicely done. All right. Back to Spotify. So yeah, we got a bunch of Spotify stuff in this episode, but there's some new features you want to talk a little bit about what Spotify rolled out this week. Yeah, so it seems like this, Pat, last week, they announced a handful of new features designed to give podcast a more prominent position in its app.
And this is the direct quote, by the way, from an article from TechCrunch that says, quote. to give podcast a more prominent position in its app as it battles with Apple and YouTube to become users preferred podcast streaming destination. It says that the company will begin recommending podcasts on its homepage and provide a following feed for staying up to date with the latest episodes of your favorite shows.
Soon, Spotify will also roll out new tools for podcast creators to recommend content and better engage with their fans in comments. Wait, so that's like a playlist feed? I understand that, right? Like it's a playlist of your favorite podcast. It's a feed that's created that just puts in new episodes of your most favorite podcasts. You know what, Rob? I'm at a loss here. I'm being a little snarky here. I'm a little bit at a loss. I honestly have no idea.
I'm going to look at it. I'm going to go into my Spotify and be able to figure that out. I don't believe that this has been full on released everywhere as of yet, from what I have read. And it's just starting to roll out. Now, I think that the part that I'm confused in about, and I think it's probably coming from a biased perspective because I have been consuming podcasts for a long time.
And so my understanding of podcast consumption through the past two decades has been in this scenario, which means you open up your podcast app. And you have a queue and or you create a playlist that does exactly what this does so that when you open up the podcast app, you have the latest episodes of the shows.
that you love because you're following them, aka subscribing to them in your podcast app of choice. Isn't that what they're supposed to do? Yeah, I guess this is their way of having a playlist. That's what I took away from it. That's hello, Castro, circa 2015. Correct. That's what I'm so confused about.
The fact that I'm like, are you meaning that right now you're literally doing what podcast apps actually do and you realize that people want to consume the shows that they follow, which is a little bizarro to me. But so I haven't seen the way it's. It's been laid out as of yet, right? But it says at the bottom of this article here, it says, in quote, in addition, Spotify is introducing a following feed.
That will serve as a dedicated spot where you can see all the latest episodes released by the podcast you follow. Instead of having to search across the app. It says, well, to access this feature. You'll tap on the podcast button on the top of the app, then the following button that appears to its right. I believe these are features that haven't been rolled out yet. Maybe they haven't. I didn't update my version of the app. I didn't see it.
Oh, I see what they're doing. So it legitimately, Rob, it's like having a cue like Castro has had forever, the way that Overcast is implementing all the stuff. It's what Pocket Cast and all of these other apps have had, which is a playlist. It's a playlist. That's what I was thinking it was. And that's OK.
I just got a little snarky about that because I'm like, is this really, this literally is why people listen to podcasts. Because you can follow the stuff that you want to listen to. And none of the other things are in your way. I wonder.
If it's going to be a true playlist where, Kessler, you can rearrange your playlist to get it in the order you want, and other apps can do that as well, I wonder if there's going to be any rearranging or they're just going to do it based on the most recent. Yeah. I think that the reason that I'm so kind of grumpy about this is because Spotify is making decisions for me in the way that Netflix makes decisions for you to deliver and bubble up content that most...
aligns with the type of content you have consumed. Within Netflix, I'm okay with that. I don't mind The algorithm and the discovery within Netflix to me feels kind of intuitive. They know what I'm listening to and they usually bubble up content that is of interest to me. I don't push back against that. And I think because of the fact that I've been listening to podcasts for such a long time, I have a way of consuming
My podcasts are my podcast. I'm actively seeking this stuff and putting it in there. I almost never, I'm sitting back going, I don't know what to listen to today. That doesn't pop into my head. I have so many podcasts to listen to that I have chosen that I'm not in a position of going, hmm, I'm looking for a new thing today. I just happen to have a zillion episodes available to me.
And Spotify is offering up all this content based on what they perceive to be my taste. And none of it is in alignment with what I want to listen to at all. But I'm sure that it's there because I don't really use Spotify and I usually only use Spotify when I'm doing research on stuff. So it's thinking that I like the things that I've tapped through. Yeah, mine is.
I do a lot of testing of shows, you know, just to make sure everything's working. So my Spotify is such an eclectic mess. When I go in and look, it shows me what I've listened to. Sometimes I'm like doing screenshots with people. I'm embarrassed of the things that are up there. That's how I feel.
That's not what I listen to. That's exactly how I feel. I walk in there and I'm like, I don't want this popping up. If somebody looked over at my Spotify landing page, if they opened up, they'd be like, who are you? You are not the person I thought you were. And it's like, ah, that is not me. That is not correct. Anyway, let us know what you think about this. I'm sure that there's Spotify users out there that are like.
super into it. And if you love Spotify, let us know what this is like for you. And if this is something that you're like, yes, so excited. I'm going to have to hit up my kids because they do listen to their podcast on Spotify. So I'll see what they have to say. And I guess now sticking to Spotify anyway, we're going to be talking about some trouble that it seems like.
They're getting into. Yeah. OK, so this first part here is a quote that comes from CNN article titled Spotify removing drug sales podcasts. Here's the quote out of the article quote. If you search Adderall on Spotify's podcast page, you'll find health podcasts about ADHD, shows about addiction recovery and comedy podcasts where hosts talk about using the medication. You may also come across multiple pages masquerading as...
podcasts that direct users to buy drugs from potentially dangerous and illegal online pharmacies. Yeah, so long to the short, there were some spammers creating bogus audio content, likely all with AI. That was nothing more than content telling people to go to sites to buy from online pharmacies. This sounds like content that's not very good, not likely to get any real audience at all, and much more of a headline than a real issue.
And when I first read this, I thought, wow, what a big nothing burger. Podcast content people choose not to listen to. Okay. To my surprise on this story, when I read another article about this that said, quote,
The issue has led U.S. Senator Maggie Hansen to demand some answers to the Joint Economic Committee from Spotify about how it's addressing the problems. In a letter to CEO Daniel Eck, Hansen... is asking Spotify to provide details by June 12th to its moderation policies and what procedures it uses to combat drug-related...
content on its platform. She also asks for specific numbers of on how many podcasts and episodes have been removed and data on how many users have interacted with the podcast, unquote. And then they actually have a quote from Hanson, what she said to Elk, quote. Addressing these threats requires an all hands on deck approach. And based on recent reports, Spotify has not exercised a level of diligence needed. I urge you to take action to prevent fake podcasts that facilitate.
the illicit sale of drugs, including those that could contain fentanyl, appearing on your platform. Unquote. Wow. That went from like zero to a thousand million. Very fast. Wow. Yeah. What a waste of time and taxpayer money. There were likely just a few dozen people, if that, that ever interacted with each of these podcasts.
I did find one of these still on Spotify. It was not on an Adderall one. Those seem to have all been purged. So I looked for what's the most advertised pills on television. Yes, I searched for Viagra. Oh. I found one still there, but here's what's interesting. It has been in Spotify since September 2020. Actually, September 2020 was the last episode. It was... Generated with AI back then. So it's an AI female voice. And it's also an Apple podcast. With zero reviews and...
either Apple or Spotify for a show that launched in 2019 with 25 episodes. The episodes are about six minutes long, give or take a couple minutes. And the one I found had a title about how to get the E part. of ED without pills. But then at the end of the episode, after talking about healthy lifestyle, it says, if you still have ED, then go to this site for 40 milligram tablets.
Point is this. I was probably the only person that ever finished that episode, be it at 2x speed. And this is not a new issue. And if not for the PR and a senator putting her two cents where they don't belong... would not be an issue at all. And Ted, if you want, I can send you the link to the podcast and Apple podcasts, just email me. And I've got a link where it's in Spotify. So Paulo, if you're listening, let me know and I can.
tell you where that one's found but the point is they are there still and they've been there for a long time this isn't something new that popped up and guess what it's not surprising spammers try lots of things This literally, there's no reviews, none, not a zip for either show in five years, six years since this show's launched. Nobody's listening.
Podcasting isn't a medium where spams work like this. It's not a stumble upon medium. It's a medium where for the message to get out, people have to really engage with it. And after listening to that episode for... four seconds, you would realize it's not content you want to listen to. It's with a really choppy AI voice. And it's clear it's not human. And it's clear the content isn't any good. I still think it's a big nothing burger.
that a senator wanted to get some PR about. So there, you got it, Senator Hanson. Kudos. Good job. Good job. I don't discount the potential issues. That might continue to arise with a free podcast hosting platform, the ability to create episodes for free and put them up, especially. Because of all of the AI voices and things like that, that could, you know, in this way that these folks are selling in quote drugs or whatever, you could really do almost anything. The potential.
use for harm is there. So I get that. I just feel that focusing just on the drugs of it is missing the larger point. Which I do feel needs to kind of think through in the way that dissemination of content sometimes can actually not be the greatest out there for some of these things. And we don't know at the time. You know how people tend to, all the podcasters, well, not podcasters, all the icky type marketers can start to find new ways of doing icky stuff.
Platforms like Spotify haven't had that kind of regulation before or even just looking at it before that things like this could happen. So in that respect, I understand. But my God. Shock and awe. I just. Can't imagine anybody listening through one of those episodes and going, oh, wow, I'm really connecting with this host. I should go to this site. Right. No, I'm going to go buy drugs right now.
And click on this link. Yes. I can't imagine that any of these spam sites as podcasts caused anyone that wasn't going to already go and buy the drugs to go and buy the drugs. Yeah. I don't mean to downplay the issue of drugs and pushing it, but I just don't see how these podcasts like this are going to connect and cause anyone to go and do something they weren't already going to do.
you don't buy your ED drugs from an AI generated voice telling you to go to a site you'd never heard of. I mean, I think. For historical context, again, if we're looking back at the way people generally consume podcasts, I'm not going to go and follow those shows. I'm not going to go subscribe to that show and have it added to Overcast. Because that's how I listen to podcasts. It's not going to happen. I'm not even going to see these.
I am sure these podcasts are in Overcast and everywhere else because it's in Apple's podcast directory, this one. Exactly. But what I'm saying is they're not in my face. They're not popping up in my face. Right. I can add it. But, you know, why? All I'm saying is it's a curated experience that I'm having for my podcast. Nobody's ever like Overcast does not suggest to me content when I'm in it. I'm consuming the content I have chosen to consume.
But if I'm going into Spotify and I happen to click through something or let's say I am doing research on ADHD medicine and I happen to have consumed a couple of podcasts about. medication. And now the algorithm within Spotify has found that that's the thing that I'm searching for. And it now starts to bubble up all of those that AI content pushing me.
fake drugs, I would be annoyed. But then I would never have found them if I just happened to grab the episodes that I wanted to listen to about Adderall and listen to them on Overcast. I wouldn't have that problem. So I think that the algorithm within Spotify and the way they're making discoverability easier for people might also prove to be problematic for things like this.
But anyway, I but that's like a lot. It's just a very extra. All right. And now moving on to YouTube. We haven't talked about YouTube really fully in this episode, but this was announced. right after we finished recording in the last episode. So it's not necessarily news news, but we haven't talked about it on the show. And this is the announcement. Quote, today we're announcing a U.S.-based weekly chart.
to showcase the most popular podcasts on YouTube. Every Wednesday, the weekly top podcast shows chart is updated with podcast shows ranked... by watch time. Generally, charts will include playlists that are designated as podcasts by the creator in the upload process and will not include playlists that contain only clips.
or shorts. How about that, Rob? What are your thoughts about this? It's good that they say what the basis is and it's consumption. It's during that weekly period. The first week, Rogan was number one, but... for the week of May 19th to May 25th. Rogan was number two and Rotten Mango was number one. Rotten Mango is a true crime podcast. Kill Tony was number three and Kill Tony is...
friends with the Rogan. So it's part of the whole Rogan brosphere where producer Red Band used to be with the Rogan and they record it out of the mothership. Oh. It's as Rogan as Rogan can get. And Kill Tony has a Netflix special going and whatnot. So, you know, that was number three. 48 Hours is number four. And The Midas Touch jumped up. to number five. I think the first week it was way down. So those are the top five for the week of May 19th to the 25th.
It's based, again, on consumption, so we're assuming the most amount of minutes consumed for all episodes combined during that week, not episodes released in that week, but content consumed in the podcast list. During that week, I'm assuming that's what it means, right? Yeah, because the watch time is one of those things that...
for sure, counts a lot for the podcast stats or actually any stats and not even podcast stats. That's the whole point. This is a very proprietary sort of measurement point for YouTube is the watch time. Interesting list. Again, many on the list, not surprised, you know, who would be there. So it's another place to look, but this is what people like on YouTube and be interesting to, you know, compare or maybe.
As we, you know, Apple's list, if you look at top shows is new subscribers in the last week. And then you can also look at top episodes, which I think top episodes is going to be. A better comparison to what this weekly podcast one is. So if you go and look at top episodes consumed in Apple Podcasts, I think that'll give you a little bit more of a comparison to this. Another place for people to get charged to say, hey, we're bigger than Rogan.
And this week it's Rotten Mango, which is a true crime podcast, which is a really good podcast. And she does a really good job with that. Yeah. So this is for sure the entire, in quote, show. Right. Meaning not. episodes. And by the way, Rotten Mango, the reason it beat Rogan, one word, Diddy. Diddy, yeah, yeah. It is Diddy. It is all about, well, there's a little bit in, I think she...
The Karen Reed of it all? I don't know if she covers that because I haven't seen it. Karen Reed. Yeah, I was looking to see if in those episodes that she covered Karen Reed, but it does look like most of the recent episodes were Diddy. Yeah, it's Diddy. It's all Diddy. Yeah. During that period of time. Titles like I got 4K to rub baby oil on her and Diddy watched. Oh, OK. Diddy, I'd like to beat the blank out of you. Wow.
I watched Diddy's lawyers question Casey for 12 hours. Yeah, so she's covering that trial and evidently it is striking a chord. Yes, across the board, because it's one of those things where that is striking a chord in all the places. So everybody is like consuming a podcast.
People that are into Diddy are not really there for the podcast. They're there for Diddy. And one of the episodes was I spent eight hours in a courtroom with Diddy and this is everything. And that episode got 6.9 million views. Oh, my God. Wow. In two weeks. Okay, then. Holy monkey. This is legit numbers here. Yeah. Again, she's been around for a long time and she does a really good job. So kudos to her and congrats, I guess.
Yeah. Sad that it has to be what it's about, but it is what it is. Hopefully people stick around, too, because that's the other thing that I mean, there's there comes a point when any time pop culture is talking about. some of the same narratives. Everybody gets a point of saturation where you can no longer. It's like, OK, can we cover something else now? You know, there comes a point when.
That ends up happening with pop culture. I'm done with it. At first, it's like, oh, yay. And then it's like, OK, enough. Again, this isn't she isn't new. If you haven't heard of her, she's been around and she's had it. a strong large audience audio and video side for some time now. Yeah, it's interesting to do. It would be very curious to be able to follow the content trends. It's a different type of...
content that's obviously being consumed in YouTube. There are threads that connect them all. And I feel that this is a little more reflective of the mainstream consumer. Like the overall vibe of people consuming content outside of watching, you know, streaming series and Prime or Hulu or Paramount Plus or whatever.
This kind of gives you an idea of which is because, oh, the other thing we didn't know, we didn't mention or maybe I didn't make clear, too. This is U.S. based. OK, that has to be very, very clear. It's U.S. based. And when you look at this list, it shows its US-ness. It's the vibe of the culture, which I'm not sure.
I like because it's a little scary to look at what that says subconsciously about the entirety of the world of the United States. Well, I mean, there's definitely hard left and hard right shows in the list, right? Midas Touch on one side, you got Sean Ryan and Tucker Carlson on the other side. I'm just going down the list. And then there's Megyn Kelly and...
The PBD podcast, I guess that's more in the middle, but still very political. Tim Kast, you've got Democracy Now!, Philip DeFranco. So there's a lot of politics podcasts in here, The Bulwark. Right. On the left, Joe Budden on the left. So, again, I would. They it's a mix between true crime and politics podcasts when I'm looking through this list and a few sports ones. Well, that's what I'm saying. It's like that's an imprint of the basically the United States.
Politics, sports, true crime, and pop culture. The number 100 show this week was Debriefed, an Area 52 podcast with Chris Ramsey. So we'll give you the last one in the group. So what is this podcast about? What is this about? Is it about aliens? It's a paranormal alien podcast. So there we go. We got one bright light in all of this stuff. Paranormal aliens. Add it to the mix. There's some hope for society yet.
When your alien paranormal podcast is a shining light in the list. Okay. Oh, my God. I know. They'll be like, oh, my God, we made it on the list there. Anywho. All right. Well, I also found another service here called, it's actually a nice URL, don't you think, Rob? Listener.com? Yeah, I don't know what. What do you I'll let you say what you want. Yeah, I'm actually. Did you sign us up? Is that how we got that URL? I did sign us up, but I actually made it private because.
So you can't really see because I kind of like I did email them going like, I need you to set this up for me. So listener.com is kind of like a I think that the people who created this. saw the problem of not being able to have a succinct, easy way for podcasters to share their data. with potential sponsors and advertisers and to be able to have like a public way for them to share that. Plus having media kits and things like that.
all in one place that looks really nice, like a little dashboard for you to be able to put that out because people are constantly asking about that. In all the places and social. And so this was created so that you could add your podcast in there. If you go over to listener.com, there are different pricing structures. There is a free tier where you can.
Basically, add your show in there and it like compiles all the different places of where your show is. If you, let's say, add your Instagram and YouTube and Spotify and. You know, all of that, it kind of pulls everything where you are together in one place. And I believe because I haven't added any more outside for the feed because I did open up an account for the feed.
The only two things that I have connected in there are just Spotify and Apple Podcasts, because we happen to be unique in the sense that our show doesn't have a dedicated. It's not unique. We don't have a dedicated presence. Meaning if I add the YouTube, it's the Lipsyn YouTube channel. It's not the Feeds YouTube channel. If I add...
any of the social. It's Lipson's social. It's not the feed social. So I don't feel that necessarily represents our audience if we were. And that's what I was thinking. Like, this is just the feed. I just wanted to see what it looked like. And it pulls data into this place and then it gives you a really nice looking, visually nice looking dashboard, Rob. That's what it is. So if somebody's interested in like, let's say sponsoring the feed or something.
we would be able to send them over to listener.com slash the feed and then say, here's my stuff. And you have the option of making it private, which is what I did. So when you make it private. When you go to listener.com slash the feed, you have to put in your name and email and then I would get sort of that request and I would either give you access or not. I don't know how that works because I haven't done that.
But it looks nice, Rob. It looks pretty. It's a pretty looking thing. The link that you sent me didn't look pretty. When I went to the link. Oh, now it says, okay, so now it's different than what I saw last night. Yeah, yeah, because I fixed it because I was supposed to like add this information to it and stuff. Oh, okay. So now it shows.
Now you have to put your name in there, your email address and like a company as an optional, whatever. And then it will I would have to give you access to look at that myself. instead of having it be public, but you can actually make it public. So if you have your show out there and you really want to show people the scope of your reach.
Right. You add all of the different places. Like I said, your Instagram, your other social channels in there, YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, whatever. And it compiles everything. So it gives you a visual overview. of the potential reach. Okay, so interesting. I went to the forum at that page and I put in my information and it instantly gave me access to the page. Oh, well then.
So much for giving you permission. Yeah. So I put in that and it popped up with the page and now it's showing about the show. It's showing the Apple primary podcast stats for Apple. It says. Total fans, zero. Podcast rating, 4.4. Number of episodes, 301. So maybe no stat information yet, but... Yeah, I don't. Oh, so here's when I got confused, because when I first went in there and I put in our podcast name, I had two The Feeds pop up, as in like two of our show The Feeds pop up.
And that's when I was like, oh, no. And so I kind of manually added this one in there because I didn't know. Remember how there was like a double of our show for whatever reason? Yeah, but so did this require you to go into your Podcast Connect account and give them access to it? No, not at all. So it's just taking the public information that's out there? Yeah.
And so when I put in just the feed, like you literally just put your stuff and then it bubbles up your podcast and then you choose the one. And then one of them had 303 episodes on the feed. And then the other one had 308 episodes on the feed. And I was like, I don't know which one is the right one. So I didn't choose either. I went to Apple Podcasts and grabbed our link and put it in there. I don't even know how they're getting the data.
Well, it's saying there's 301, so it went with the 301. Yeah. So, regardless, it's there, you guys. You can go check it out, and then you can pay money if you want more things. It's pretty. once it's populated with all the stuff. But I'm not quite sure. I don't know if I would need to pay the money to do it.
you know, as of now. But you guys can check it out and see how that works out for you. And I think it solves a problem that some people have for media kits and having to give people your information. It sort of like pulls it in in a really nice way for... people and you can share them. And I think it also has the potential to share your stuff like people can find it. I don't know. I'm still trying to figure out how this all works. But it's interesting.
When you create a new pod kit, you can have pod kits and send those out to people. So, anywho. All right. And I have here a little something. We got a little bit of feedback and I thought we were going to give him a shout out. So we got feedback that says, hi, Rob and Elsie, since I think you've indicated that no one has podcasts hosted in more languages at Libsyn than Mongabay does.
So I thought it sounded newsworthy in case it's something to share on the feed. So we're going to share it. Guess what? This is a shout out for you. And this is from their recent release. PR release, quote, with the recent edition of podcast in French and Bahasia. Oh my gosh, I hope that that's right. Bahasa Indonesia.
The award-winning 26-year-old environmental news outlet, Manga Bay, now hosts podcasts in four languages with Libsyn, the world's leading podcast hosting company. Producing podcasts in multiple languages is part of our nonprofit news outlets. strategy to reach people where they are, in the mediums they prefer and in the language that they use.
says Rhett Ayers, Butler, founder and CEO of Manga Bay. Partnering with a top company like Lipsyn to distribute these shows to our global audience just makes sense. Manga Bay's French and Indonesian podcast now hosted on Lipsyn join existing podcast. Podcasts published in Spain and two award-winning shows in English and one for a global audience called the Manga Bay Newscast, which won its first award in 2024. And another for listeners in India called Everything Environmental.
which recently won Best Produced Science Show in 2025 India Audio Summit and Awards, and both of which are finalists for awards set to be announced at the Publisher Podcast Awards in June 11th in London. Manga Bay is a... 26-year-old award-winning nonprofit environmental news platform with five bureaus publishing original daily reporting in six languages for millions of monthly readers. And for any of your information, contact Mangabe's
podcast producer and impact editor, Eric Hoffner, over at eric, with a K, at mongabay.com. Congrats! Woohoo! Thank you, Eric, for sending that in. Yeah. In a recent Nielsen report titled The... 2025 annual marketing report from Nielsen. Nice original title there. Podcasting got a couple of mentions, but the key one is per marketing spend.
The share of marketers planning to increase budget by more than 50% in the next 12 months compared to last year's spend. For podcasting, it was 16% of marketers are planning to increase more than 50%. But they didn't say what the percentage were that were holding steady or increasing from zero to 50 or decreasing, just the 50% or more increase. So I wish there was a little bit more data there, guys. Sorry.
The top category for increase was social media, with 29% planning to increase 50% or more in the next 12 months compared to the past 12 months. But as a full report... We have a link to the PDF if you want to read that report and go through and look at some other marketing stuff. But podcasting only gets a couple of mentions in there. Overall, it's about all the other places people are spending marketing on.
And all right, we have, this would be a good place for a promo. Good place for a promo. Here we go. This is Sound Strategy. Are you obsessed with podcasts? Do you make them? Consume them? Overthink them? Hi, I'm Lucas Dickey, the host of Sound Strategy, the most meta podcast about podcasting ever. Literally, that's the name. Podcast keyword strategists definitely get it. Each week, I'll be joined by my co-hosts, Alison Melody.
for conversation with industry veterans, including those like Joe Rubin, Rob Walsh and Elsie Escobar, Dave Jackson, Joni Deutsch, Maribel Caseta-Smith, and the list goes on and on. We will discuss the weird, wonderful universe that is podcasting, storytelling, and content creation. We'll bring you roundtable rants, industry hot takes, and existential questions like, 20 years into podcasting, do any of us really even know what we're doing?
Whether you're a pro podcaster or a curious creator, this is your backstage pass to the present and future of podcasting. Join us every Friday at soundstrategy.fm to tune into the latest episode. Sound Strategy with me, Lucas Dickey, the most meta podcast about podcasting ever. Well, thank you so much, Sound Strategy. And as you heard on the promo, Rob and I were both on the show as guests. I believe, Rob, this is the, I mean, is it the only time?
that you and I have been a guest together on a podcast in all of our time together. I think it is. Yeah. So how about that? I can't remember any other. Yeah. I don't think we've never ever done it. So. Yay. There's still a first. You guys, you can go and listen to the show. There'll be a link in the show notes. I'll put a link to our episode in there so you guys can hear a little bit of our backstory.
some strategy around the feed and all of that. So it would be amazing. Yay. So that covers our where have we been? It does. Absolutely. It absolutely does. All right. So stats, as I mentioned, we're recording this episode on May 29th.
which means this is actually the third episode we recorded in the month, which means the monthly stats are not over. So we have to wait until the next one for me to do median and mean because I can't pull that report until the month is actually over. A few weeks back, though... I asked Grok this question. So I do have some stats up here to throw in. So this is bonus stat stuff. Roughly, and this is my question, Grok. Roughly, how many podcasts are there that get over 10,000 downloads a month?
And here was Grok's response, estimating the number of podcasts that get you over 10,000 downloads per month. involves working with available industry data and making some reasonable assumptions, as exact figures aren't directly published. Let's break it down for what we know as of February 21st, 2025. I guess that was when I asked this. First, the total number of podcasts is substantial. As of January 2025, there are approximately 4.3 million podcasts worldwide, according to various industries.
resources like Podcast Insights and Buzzsprout sets. However, not all of these are active, meaning they've released an episode recently. Data suggests that only about 15 to 17.5% of podcasts are active. having published in the last 90 days, which brings the number of active podcasts to roughly 645,000 to 2,500. It's wrong there. The number is like 400, but okay. Going back into my grok voice.
For simplicity, let's use a midpoint of around 700,000 active podcasts. Next, we need to determine how many of these active podcasts achieve over 10,000 downloads per month. Podcast download statistics are often reported on a per-episode basis.
With a specific time frame, example, seven days or 30 days after release. And benchmarks come from hosting platforms like Buzzsprout, which tracks over 120,000 active shows. According to Buzzsprout's January 2025 data, top 10% of podcasts get 469,000 downloads. or more in the first seven days, top 5% get 1,120 in seven days, and top 1% get 4,700 downloads or more in seven days.
The metric of 10,000 downloads per month is trickier because it could mean total downloads across all episodes in a month or downloads for a single episode within 30 days. Industry Norm's example from Libsyn and OSHA suggests that... Advertisers often look for 5 to 10,000 downloads per episode within 30 days as a threshold, implying this is a significant benchmark. Let's assume 10,000 downloads a month.
refers to a single episode performance for within 30 days as this aligns with how success is typically measured. That was not what I asked. But anyway, Buzzsprout's data does not directly provide 30-day for 10,000 downloads, but other sources help bridge the gap, like... Lipson's Rob Walsh has historically noted, circa 2021, that an episode, yes, Grok quoted back to me, me, for my question, which was really meta.
Circa 2021, that an episode with 9,000 downloads in 30 days is in the top 5%, and 50,000 downloads in 30 days is in the top 1%, adjusting for growth in podcasting since then, and considering Buzzsprout's figure of roughly 47 at the top. It's reasonable to estimate that the top 1% might reach 10,000 to 15,000 downloads over 30 days given downloads take or off after the initial week.
If 10,000 downloads per episode in 30 days falls around the top 1% mark, a conservative estimate, as it might be slightly below 2%, Then 1% of 700,000 is approximately 7,000 podcasts. However, some podcasts release multiple episodes per month. Weekly shows, four to five, yada, yada, exceed 10,000. Let's see, downloads. get to the point here. Without precise 2025 data for the 10,000 download threshold, a rough estimate based on the top 1% to 2% range seems plausible, splitting the difference
And accounting for growth in listener numbers projected 630.9 million by year-end 2025. I'd estimate roughly 10,000 to 15,000 podcasts get over 10,000 downloads per month. per episode or in total as of early 2025. This is a ballpark figure leaning toward the lower end if we're strict about per episode performance and higher if we include cumulative.
monthly totals for frequent publishers. This number feels consistent with the competitive podcast landscape, where only a small fraction, like the top 720,000 shows with over 10 episodes, sustains significant audience. Reality is most podcasts hover around 100 to 200 downloads per episode, so 10,000 plus is a rarefied tier. It was a long way to get to, not a clear answer, but overall, I had estimated...
that if we wanted to say how many get 10,000 a month, it's somewhere in combined, all over combined, it's somewhere around the 100 to 250,000 range, depending on how you look at the numbers. And I would say... Around 100,000 is a more accurate number of how many get to 10,000 a month, all episodes combined. And I think if you took Grok's number, and I went back a little bit on this, long and short, it's not a big percentage.
And the reason I say $10,000 per month, all episodes combined, that's really kind of where you want to be if you're going to monetize with programmatic. You can do it lower, and yes, and you can make some money at the lower, but if you want to make money that is... enough to pay for hosting, enough to pay for equipment, you've got to be probably in the 10K range for all episodes combined. So have a return on your investment. And that doesn't even include your time.
Just talking about equipment and other software and other support materials. And I look at that number as overall, we'll be lucky if it's at 10,000, 100,000 shows in the whole. podcast sphere that get to 10k and it's probably a little bit under that there we go that's the long of the short all right and if hopefully you were not operating heavy machinery during that section well Maybe now they just woke up after they heard me laugh. They're like, why is she laughing? Anyway.
All right. If you guys have any feedback, anybody, I mean, I think we've already covered where have we been and where are we going or are we doing that again? We were also at the podcast show in London, which seemed to be a great success from what I have seen. At least in LinkedIn land. There's a lot of people there. Good show. Hopefully we'll have more people there next year. Yeah. And we're going next to Podcast Movement Evolutions. I mean, Podcast Movement, period.
in August in Dallas. And you already heard where Rob and I have been, so you can click through and listen to another episode where we were featured. But... If you have any other feedback, though, you can for sure email the show, thefeed at libsyn.com. And we will talk about what you're sending over because we talk about feedback on the podcast. It's very meta that we're asking for feedback right now, you guys.
Because we literally craft this based on the stuff that you guys send in. Okay? Yeah. Absolutely. All right. So if you're looking to start a podcast or switch up your podcast home, you can use the code THEFEED. for a free month with us. That would be amazing. We would love for you to be part of the Lipson family.
And again, the feed at Libsyn.com. If you have anything to say, you can also call us at 412-573-1934. Or you can use SpeakPipe at SpeakPipe.com slash the feed. All right. Till the next time, folks. Ciao. Bye.