How much are podcast downloads really down year-over-year?

Podcast downloads are down since the release of iOS 17 in September 2023, but by how much? For Podnews, Podtrac analyzed 1,000 of the largest podcasts it measures to quantify changes to year-over-year download counts on a per podcast basis. Many of them are included in Podtrac’s Top Podcasts by Category.

Downloads per podcast in February 2024 were down 15.2% on average year-over-year.

• 78% of podcasts had lower downloads YOY, while 22% had higher downloads.
• Average change in downloads per podcast YOY for the most popular categories were: Comedy (-15%), News (-11%), Society & Culture (-14%), Sports (-15%).
• Across all podcasts and episodes in the sample, newer episodes saw less of a decrease than older (back catalog) episodes: Episodes posted within the last 7 days (-3%), episodes posted 29+ days ago (-55%).

February 2024: Downloads per podcast were down 15% YOY on average per Podtrac measurement data.

Of the 1,000 podcasts analyzed:

• 22% of podcasts had positive growth YOY
• 21% saw a decrease of 0-20%
• 27% saw a decrease of 20-40%
• 20% saw a decrease of 40-60%
• 10% saw a decrease of more than 60%.

Podcasts which saw positive growth YOY included: 1) shows at a higher growth stage when compared to more established shows, and 2) seasonally based shows which posted more new episodes in Jan/Feb 2024 than in Jan/Feb 2023.

February 2024: Changes to average downloads per podcast YOY per category

Average change in downloads per podcast YOY for the most popular categories were: Comedy (-15%), News (-11%), Society & Culture (-14%), Sports (-15%).

February 2024: Changes to downloads YOY by episode post date

Across all podcasts and episodes in the sample, newer episodes saw less of a decrease than older (back catalog) episodes.

Methodology

Podtrac created a sample for this analysis consisting of the top 1000 podcasts it measures that had a minimum of 100,000 downloads during both February 2023 and February 2024. Podtrac then calculated the changes in downloads for these time periods for each podcast and produced the above statistics. 2.7 billion total downloads for the two months were analyzed in this analysis.