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# The incredible shrinking podcast industry
- URL: https://werd.io/the-incredible-shrinking-podcast-industry/
- Published: 2024-01-15T16:47:56.000Z
- Updated: 2024-01-15T16:47:56.000Z
- Author: Ben Werdmuller
- Tags: NotableLinks, #Import 2025-06-13 09:20

The entire podcast industry's numbers were juiced by a quirk of how Apple Podcasts and other podcasting apps work. The actual number of listeners were far lower - as revealed when Apple Podcasts made a big update last September.

"For instance, The Daily and Dateline both publicly touted reaching over a billion total downloads. But representatives for these shows would not say if those numbers or other impressive daily or weekly download stats are still accurate."

Spoiler: they're not, and a lot of media companies are having to rapidly recalibrate how they report their numbers - many of whom could probably have been more openly honest about their popularity to begin with. [#Media](https://werd.io/tag/Media)

\[[Link](https://www.semafor.com/article/01/14/2024/the-incredible-shrinking-podcast-industry)\]