The Podnews Report Card 2026 Results
As presented at The Podcast Show in London, here are the results of the fifth annual Podnews Report Card.
We had more than ever responses this year. But more helpfully, all the scores that appear here had more than 50 votes, so they’re robust in the information they’re giving us.
Our first question asked about apps, and whether podcast producers feel they do a good job for their listeners. All these are scores out of five, and you didn’t have to vote on tools you hadn’t used. YouTube scored higher than last year, and, as you’ll see, has increased its scores throughout.
It’s the pieces of feedback that are the most important, though. We got 779 of them - and, interestingly, quite similar numbers for the big apps. Amazon Music, though, didn’t get many comments.
Discoverability remains the most important thing for podcast creators. We want our stuff to be found, and we want podcast apps to help with that.
A few years ago, people found it really difficult to get into these directories. No such mentions here now, with positive comments about how easy it is to get listed in Apple and Spotify, after both companies streamlined their publication tools.
But, in the US, people are not happy about their IDs being scanned just so they can publish a podcast on YouTube.
The data that YouTube offers is really detailed. RSS makes this a challenge for most forms of audio podcasting, but there’s no reason why Apple Podcasts couldn’t make data as detailed as YouTube if they wanted to.
While ads are important, there is much more discussion this year about other forms of earning revenue - from memberships and subscriptions to tip jars, etc. Podcasting 2.0 has dipped sharply, after the failure of “streaming sats” to take hold.
Who is innovating? Apple Podcasts gets the highest boost here, probably because of the new features it has launched this year.
There’s real value and shared ownership felt about open RSS, and its place to power podcasting. Those that aren’t supporting it are thought of more negatively.
After Podcast Index - a very small team - Apple, once more, wins the creator relations scores. Not bad for one of the largest companies in the world.
But here’s the main story. For the first time, YouTube is at #2, after Apple Podcasts. It’s beaten Spotify, who have remained relatively static in the numbers. Perhaps this shows that more podcast creators are using YouTube now, and feel more confident to score them; but perhaps it means that YouTube is doing something right after all.
We did.
As we do every year, we gave previews of these scores to our friends at Apple, Amazon and YouTube, who each asked us to share this information.
We are also sharing all comments and scores - anonymised - to the platforms.
Thank you if you took part. We know how useful this is to the platforms; and know how much part it plays in effecting change in the industry.
