Apple ‘quietly tightens’ reporting of how many folks listen to podcasts

Apple has “quietly tightened” its reporting of how many people listen to podcasts, “sending shock waves through an embattled audio industry still reeling from the end of the COVID-era production bubble,” according to a Semafor report.

The shift, Apple wrote in a blog post, was technical: The dominant podcasting platform had begun switching off automatic downloads for users who haven’t listened to five episodes of a show in the last two weeks.

Semafor says that while few users noticed the shift, some of the biggest podcasts in the world saw their official listener numbers drop dramatically. Long-running shows that publish frequently were hit particularly hard.

One podcast network told Semafor it had seen its downloads drop between single digits and low double digits depending on the show. Another well-known podcaster and executive said for some shows, the decline in downloads was as high as 40%.

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