Listen Notes
Address: 
San Francisco, CA, USA
The Best Podcast Search Engine
Website: www.listennotes.com
Latest news
- Sep 11: Listen Notes removed 4,063 podcasts from its database last month after determining that they were wholly priced with AI. Since December last year, it has removed 29,435 shows. The data is available here.
- Feb 26: Listen Notes is removing AI-generated “fake podcasts”, and now reporting on how many it’s removed. The company removed 1,983 last month. Listen Notes say they want “only authentic, human-created podcasts” in their directory. The AI-narrated (but humanly-created) show White Smoke remains on the service.
- Oct 11, 2024: After a list of AI-generated podcasts using NotebookLM was published by Listen Notes, John Spurlock has analysed the podcast hosts being used to publish them. You’ll never guess who’s #1. (This is a lie. You’ll probably guess.)
- Oct 9, 2024: Is a new Google service flooding podcast apps with spam? Calling them “a threat to the podcasting community”, the podcast directory Listen Notes has made a NotebookLM Detector, to spot shows made by Google’s NotebookLM. So far, it’s detected more than 280 shows which have been made using the AI tool. “Notebook LM has made it easier to mass-produce low-quality, fake content”, says Listen Notes founder Wenbin Fang; though The Spectator’s Sean Thomas suggests that AI may “make the podcast bro irrelevant”.
- Aug 13, 2024: Listen Notes suggests that July saw the lowest number of “new podcasts” this year - more than 60% lower year-on-year. Technically, the number refers to “new feeds”; many new podcasts have been launched on defunct feeds for shows that have ceased. There is a decline in production of new podcast episodes: that’s only down 6% year-on-year according to the Podcast Index (see the tech stuff last month).
Data credits: Google Maps, Podnews newsletter