Apple Podcasts
Hosting platforms · Listening apps
Address: 
Cupertino, CA, USA
Apple Podcasts is an audio streaming service and media player application developed by Apple for playing podcasts. Apple began supporting podcasts with iTunes 4.9 released in June 2005 and launched its first standalone mobile app in 2012. The app was later pre-installed with iOS beginning October 2014. The Apple Podcasts directory features more than two million shows. Apple Podcasts is available on iOS, iPadOS, macOS, watchOS, tvOS, CarPlay, visionOS, Microsoft Windows operating systems, web browsers, and on Amazon Alexa devices. Wikipedia
Website: www.apple.com
Owned by: Apple
About Apple Podcasts
Apple Podcasts is the world’s premier destination for podcast discovery and listening. It provides the best experience for listeners to explore millions of shows on every imaginable topic and to directly support the creators behind them. For fans looking to deepen their connection with their favorite podcasts, Apple Podcasts also offers thousands of premium subscriptions with benefits like exclusive content and ad-free listening. The entire library is available for free, and is seamlessly integrated across iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, and CarPlay, and on the web at https://podcasts.apple.com.
Latest news
- Aug 26: Good news: Podbean stats seem to be getting back to normal, after rolling out a change to its stats that marked all downloads from Apple Podcasts as invalid.
- Aug 25: Podbean podcasters were given a shock this week, as the company rolled out new filters to its download analytics "designed to identify and filter AI and crawler-related traffic" - but the change marked all downloads from Apple Podcasts as invalid, causing a significant decrease in reported numbers to its customers. Podnews has seen data from some podcasts showing hundreds of plays on Apple Podcasts Connect, but apparently zero downloads to Apple Podcasts in Podbean's analytics dashboard during the same time period. One support email says: "We recently pushed an update to mitigate disingenuous traffic from accessing podcasts on our side. Unfortunately, this inadvertently also affected the genuine traffic reporting. It has been advised that we rolled back our current update." If a rollback has happened, no change has been visible in the numbers as yet.
- Aug 24: Audiogram is a new remote MCP service that lets Claude, OpenClaw, Hermes and other MCP-compatible imaginary friends search Apple Podcasts, process available episodes, and retrieve full transcripts for research and analysis.
- Aug 21: Good news for video podcasters from Apple Podcasts: they shared early results from three shows that have begun distributing video via HLS on the platform. TED's How to Be a Better Human (Acast) saw its unique audience on Apple Podcasts grow 93%, and new follows on Apple Podcasts have increased 113%. Toni and Ryan (Acast) saw unique audience grow by nearly 40%, and new follows are up 68%. And The MeatEater Podcast (Omny Studio) saw new follows up 151%, while "32% of non-follows who watched the video went on to follow the show within a week".
- Aug 19: Buzzsprout launched Apple Podcasts HLS video in May, and already hosts more than 11,000 video episodes from more than 1,000 shows, the company has said. The average show saw downloads increase by 19%; some have seen even more dramatic growth.
Data credits: Google Maps, Podnews newsletter, Wikipedia