Listening Archives - The Podcast Host

Podcast Statistics & Industry Trends 2025: Listens, Gear, & More

Colin Gray — Thu, 17 Apr 2025 06:00:00 +0000

There are so many podcast statistics, facts and trends circulating, from listener numbers to industry size. It’s hard to know where to start. So, to make your life easy, I thought I’d bring as many podcast industry stats together here, for your reading pleasure.

I’ll keep this article up to date as new reports come out. Therefore, below, you should find the latest numbers, according to the podcast industry.

Listen, follow, or subscribe on your podcast app of choice!

So, let’s get into it. Here are the questions we’ll cover. Take your pick!

Podcast Industry Statistics

How Many Podcasts Are There, Right Now?

In total, how many podcasts are there in the world right now?

There are 4,509,765 total podcasts registered, around the world.
podcastindex.org – April 2025

But what counts as a “registered podcast?”. We reached out to The Podcast Index to enquire.

Unsurprisingly, there are many “Hey, is this thing on!?” 20-second 1-episode “podcasts” on the free hosting platforms. The Podcast Index criteria require shows to have at least three episodes (one is often a trailer) and at least one of those episodes to be three minutes long.

So now that we know the total number of podcasts, let’s look at one of the most in-demand podcast statistics: how many are registered on one of the biggest listening platforms, Apple?

Apple Podcasts hosts 2,800,138 podcasts as of April 2025
Podcast Industry Insights courtesy of Daniel J. Lewis

This is up from 2,332,900 (+20%) in September 2021. To show growth over the past few years, here’s what Apple announced at WWDC in 2018:

In 2018 there were 550,000 active podcasts on iTunes
Apple, WWDC 2018

How Many Podcast Episodes Are There?

There are currently over 106,796,827 episodes published in Apple Podcasts, as of April 2025
Podcast Industry Insights courtesy of Daniel J. Lewis

This is up from 52,990,000 in June 2021. Again, to compare, these stats came from Apple at WWDC in 2018:

In 2018 there were 18.5 millions episodes published, total
Apple, WWDC 2018

How Many Active Podcasts Are There?

The stats show that just over 15% of the podcasts on Apple Podcasts are currently active. That means they’ve released a new episode in the past 90 days.

There are currently 436,240 active podcasts on Apple Podcasts, as of January 2025
Podcast Industry Insights courtesy of Daniel J. Lewis

View full active podcast stats

26 Fascinating Facts About Sound: It’s Not Audio “Only”

Katie Paterson — Wed, 08 Jan 2025 09:38:18 +0000

Did you know that sound can make wine taste better and even levitate small objects?

As podcasters, we know the power of sound better than most. But when you’re speaking into the mic, do you ever stop to think about those invisible waves that are formulating your words?

To celebrate our favourite medium, I’ve pulled together some of the most mind-bending facts about sound that might change how you think about – or even approach – your next podcast recording.

How Humans Listen

Children can hear sounds that adults can’t. Humans typically hear between 20 Hz and 20,000 Hz, but this range shrinks with age. Infants can actually hear frequencies slightly higher than 20 kHz, but lose some high-frequency sensitivity as they mature. High-frequency sounds (above 17 kHz) can only be heard by infants and younger people. This is why they’re used in “teen deterrent” devices.

You can hear without ears. You can “hear” sound through vibrations in your skull, which is how bone-conduction headphones work.

There’s science behind not liking your own voice recording. If, like most people, you hate hearing the sound of your own voice during editing, there’s science behind that. You hear your voice differently because, normally, you hear it through both air conduction and bone conduction. Recordings, on the other hand, only capture air conduction.

Sound frequencies can stir emotions. Low-frequency sounds are used in horror movies because they trigger primal fear responses in humans. These sounds cause fear and anxiety, even when we can’t consciously hear them. Using low-frequency sound effects in your horror podcast will create more impact.

Sound can make things taste better. Humans naturally want to match outside sensations to taste. In one study, participants found wine tasted better when matched with the right music.

Sound underwater warps human perception. Humans find it difficult to pinpoint the direction of where an underwater sound is coming from due to different acoustic properties. The cues we usually use to determine sound direction – interaural time and level differences – are different under water due to high sound velocity of water and longer wavelengths.

Sound can be used as a weapon. During WWII, some nations experimented with using low-frequency sound waves as a potential weapon. This is called a sonic or ‘acoustic attack‘. Sonic weapons can be explicit, e.g. an extremely loud noise. Or, they can be covert, like infrasound that affects the human body without the targets noticing.

Acoustics in architecture. Ancient theatres like Epidaurus in Greece have nearly perfect acoustics. Their careful design means the audience can hear whispers from the stage even at the furthest distance.

Acoustics in Architecture: How Spaces Shape the Sounds We Hear

Sound can reduce anxiety and stress: The 528 hz frequency is a specific tone (roughly between a C and a C# note on the musical scale). In wellness circles, it’s thought to have healing properties. In one scientific study, when rats were exposed to the sound, it reduced anxiety and increase testosterone in the brain.

How Animals Hear

Bats use ultrasound to navigate. Bats navigate and hunt in pitch dark using echolocation, emitting sounds at frequencies above 20,000 Hz, which is beyond human hearing.

Elephants use infrasound to communicate. Sounds below 20 Hz (infrasound) can be felt more than heard and are used by elephants for long-distance communication. These sounds can be felt from several kilometres away.

Water temperature helps marine life talk to each other. In the ocean, the SOFAR channel (Sound fixing and ranging transmission) is a layer where sound travels best because it’s the right temperature. The SOFRA channel helps marine sounds carry for thousands of miles.

The Record Breakers

The loudest sound on earth. The eruption of the Krakatoa volcano (Indonesia 1883) produced a sound heard 3,000 miles away. This makes the Krakatoa eruption the loudest recorded sound in history. But some poorly-mixed podcasts still come close with their intro music.

The fastest recorded human speech. On average, humans speak around 150 words per minute. The Guinness record for the fastest talker in the English language is over 600 words/minute.

The most intense sound ever made by nature. The tiny snapping shrimp (less than 10cm long) snaps its claws so fast to stun prey that it creates a sound louder than a gunshot (up to 210 decibels).

The quietest place. The Anechoic chambers at Microsoft’s Washington headquarters were built to absorb nearly all sound. This creates a silence so deep (-9.4 decibels) that people often can only hear their own heartbeat.

The lowest-sung vocal note. Tim Storms holds the Guinness Book of Records title for the lowest note produced by a human at G -7 (0.189 Hz). This is 8 octaves lower than the lowest G note on the piano.

The Super Sciencey Stuff

The speed of sound varies. Sound travels fastest in solids, slower in liquids, and slowest in gases. It changes based on the medium and its properties, such as air (343 m/s), water (1,480 m/s), and steel (~5,960 m/s).

Sound can’t exist in space. Sound needs a medium (air, water, or solid) to propagate. This means that sound can’t exist in space.

Sound changes depending on your distance from it. The change in sound frequency as an object moves closer to you is called the doppler effect. This explains why a siren’s pitch changes as it passes.

Temperature impacts how sound travels. Sound travels faster in warm air than cold air because heat increases the energy of air molecules. However, sound travels further distances in cold air because sound waves bend away from warm air and back towards the ground.

The Weird and Wonderful

Resonance and glass shattering. A singer can break a glass by matching its resonant frequency with their voice at a high volume. Don’t believe it? Watch this video (skip to 6:30 if you’re feeling impatient).

Sound waves have a shape. Sound waves appear as sine waves and can be visualized using devices like oscilloscopes. They can also create patterns in sand. Cymatics experiments show how sound frequencies produce intricate patterns in particles on a surface.

Sound can lift objects. Acoustic levitation is when sound waves suspend small objects in midair by counteracting gravity.

You can create audio illusions. Like optical illusions, you can trick the human ear into hearing sounds differently from how they’re being created. For example, Shepard tones create an auditory “staircase” effect of endlessly rising pitch when, in reality, it’s just a single note.

You can put out fire with sound. With the right frequency, sound waves can seperate oxygen in fire from fuel, extinguishing a fire in seconds. Watch how these students from Virginia were able to extinguish fire using sound.

It Isn’t “Just” Sound

Sound is a fascinating and limitless medium. In its simplest form, it is perfect for talking to your audience during their commutes, dog walks, or gym sessions. Some podcasters go beyond words, too, creating atmospheres and soundscapes using ASMR, Binaural Beats, and 3D audio techniques. As we’ve learned today, too, there is just so much more to explore.

So the next time you’re behind the mic, remember this: Those invisible sound waves you’re creating are part of the same phenomenon that helps bats navigate in pitch darkness, marine life survive, and makes humans feel all different kinds of sensations and emotions. There’s something pretty incredible about that.

3D Audio: The Immersion of Binaural Sound

Matthew McLean — Thu, 29 Aug 2024 07:00:00 +0000

Far from being a limited medium (essentially a placeholder for the much more immersive experience of watching two talking heads on a video!?), we are only scratching the surface of what’s possible with creative audio in podcasting.

Whilst cinematic visuals can show you something, audio provides you with the tools to visualise it. That’s why you often feel disappointed when the monster is finally revealed in a horror film. Your imagination had conjured up something much more terrible.

Of course, that doesn’t mean you can’t have brilliant video or outstanding visuals. But it does mean we often undersell audio as “sound only” when there is so much more to be done and explored with the medium.

We’ve already written about what podcasts do for your brain, binaural beats, and ASMR. Now, I figured it was time to take a look at the world of 3D audio. So whether you’re a podcast creator looking to create your magnum opus or a listener hungry for something that really stimulates the senses, here’s why 3D audio could be your new favourite playground.

What is 3D Audio?

You’re likely familiar with stereo audio, where sounds can differ in either ear at one time. Stereo panning can be used effectively to create a feeling of immersion, but 3D audio takes that to a whole new dimension – quite literally.

3D audio simulates how sound exists in a real-world, three-dimensional space. It’s achieved through a technique known as “spacialisation”, where each sound originates from specific directions (left, right, front, back, above, below) and distances. This creates the perception that sounds are coming from different locations in space, not just from fixed speaker positions.

3D audio is also known as binaural audio. However, to my layman’s mind, the subtle difference between the two is that 3D audio is created with software and binaural (spatial) audio is recorded using mics that replicate our ears and heads.

Sound good so far? Well, that depends on whether you’re wearing headphones or not. But enough dad jokes – who came up with this brilliantly immersive, cutting-edge, and obviously brand-new concept?

A Brief History of 3D & Binaural Audio

In 1881 (what a year, eh?), the first known experiment with binaural audio was conducted by Clément Ader in Paris. Ader developed the Théâtrophone, which allowed people to listen to opera performances remotely using two telephone lines, each carrying the sound from a separate microphone placed on the stage. This created a rudimentary form of stereo sound. His podcast made the New & Noteworthy charts in iTunes a few weeks later.

In the 1930s and 40s, the modern concept of binaural recording began to take shape. Harvey Fletcher and his team at Bell Laboratories were pivotal in advancing binaural sound research. They developed the head and torso simulator (a dummy head with microphones in the ear canals) to capture sound more realistically.

The 1960s saw developments in stereophonic sound systems and multi-channel recording techniques, and in the 70s and 80s, the rise of quadraphonic sound (a four-channel system) and surround sound systems in cinemas and home audio systems further pushed the boundaries of 3D audio.

In the mid-90s, the famous “virtual barber shop” recording was created. Here, you could pop on a pair of headphones and experience the sound of clippers and scissors moving around your head, presumably sculpting a glorious 3D middle-parting bowl cut.

It’s no shock to learn that today, in two thousand and twenty-whatever-year-it-is-now, software has taken the driving seat when it comes to creating spectacular 3D sound. But before we dig more into that, here’s a quick note on something that sounds like it’s come straight out of a sci-fi story about a mad scientist – Head-Related Transfer Function.

Whilst nobody is having their head transplanted onto another body here, Head-Related Transfer Function is still a cool and interesting concept.

HRTF refers to the way sounds are filtered and modified by the listener’s body, (particularly the head and ears) before reaching the eardrum. HRTFs account for how sound waves are affected by the shape of the outer ear (pinna), the head, and the torso, allowing the brain to determine the direction and distance of a sound source. These functions vary from person to person, making personalised HRTFs a future goal for truly immersive 3D audio.

I could go on and talk about ambisonics, interaural time differences, and holographic audio, but, to be honest, I’m already pretty out of my depth, here. So, let’s quickly grab a 3D audio expert and find out a little more about actually creating this stuff.

Owl Field · The Fairy Tree – Chapter 1

Owl Field: 3D Audio Production

Here’s Michel Lafrance of Owl Field. I’ve been enjoying Michel’s work for the best part of a decade, and he’s my go-to guy for anything 3D audio-related. I reached out to Michel and said something like, “If I send you some questions, could you answer them for me?” and he replied something like “, Yeah, sure.”

Think of this part as the preamble in a podcast where we banter about the weather.

Q. Tell us about Owl Field and the type of audio you create.

I started Owl Field in 2015 with the goal of trying to create the most immersive audio experience possible. Something that made the listener feel like they were not just immersed by the audio, but actually felt like they were in the story world, present alongside the story’s characters, surrounded by the sound effects and music.

Q. What was the catalyst for you becoming a binaural audio creator?

I’d say that was in 2014. I stumbled across the virtual barbershop on YouTube, which is now a very famous binaural experience. That was my first introduction to binaural audio. And as I was listening, I was already envisioning all the exciting things I could do with this type of perspective for the listener. I knew right away that’s what I wanted to do.

Q. How do you record and mix your productions, and has this evolved over the years?

Yeah, it’s absolutely evolved.

I started out with the binaural head approach, where the microphone is, is literally a head with microphones in the ears. And while there are still uses for that approach, I quite quickly realised that I much prefer the post-production approach, which is a more polished sound. Working with a collection of sounds to build a custom soundscape, I find I have more control over the direction of the sound, the accuracy of the mix, the noise floor, and the noise ratio. I like having that precision.

But even since making that decision, it’s been a very fast-moving field. Every year, new companies release their own 3D audio production software. So, yeah, I’m always trying to keep on top of that, on top of the new tech, adjusting my workflow, and I’ve actually found different techniques work better for different types of sounds. And that’s just something that comes with testing and experience.

Q. Tell us about something particularly cool or unique that you created, and are extra proud of.

I’m probably most proud of The Escape Room. It’s a completely interactive 60-minute escape room podcast. And, although Owl Field had done an interactive audio drama before with The Fairy Tree, this was just on a different level, as the player needed to be guided through the game without them accidentally skipping ahead.

There needed to be a variety of audio puzzles, puzzles that were an appropriate difficulty level for most people. There needed to be hints given to the player at just the right time; then, on top of everything, it needed to work out to approximately 60 minutes for the average player. And the fact that this is a full-cast audio drama entirely in 3D, audio puzzles are practically an afterthought. But I always say I can’t thank the Alpha and Beta testers enough because there’s no way I would have been able to work out the timing without them.

Q. Have you ever dabbled in the creation of binaural beats or ASMR?

ASMR elements do tend to sneak their way into the productions. Yeah, just to give the listener an extra thrill, especially when they’re not expecting it—like a mischievous little fairy maliciously whispering just behind your ear.

Q. Why do you think people enjoy 3D audio so much? What’s so unique about it?

Immersive content is a big thing, and has been for a while, but I find 3D audio even goes beyond just immersive. It gives the listener the sense of presence that you receive from virtual reality experiences. It feels like you’re in the story alongside the characters and surrounded by the sound effects.

“I’ve always maintained that I think 3D Audio will eventually do to stereo what stereo did to mono.”

Sounds can come at you from any direction. There can be sounds that are very, very distant and quiet. They can wrap around your head. The soundscape has so much more space to use. Characters can be in a myriad of configurations, and if done well, it rewards the listener for listening attentively. It’s just more thrilling, I think, and more engaging than traditional stereo. And I’ve always maintained that I think 3D Audio will eventually do to stereo what stereo did to mono.

Q. There’s a lot of hype around video content right now. What do you say to folks who think of audio as video’s poorer and more limited cousin?

I’m not sure I would call audio limited, especially with spatial audio. I know the sentiment there is that it’s easier to follow and understand something visually than to understand something that’s audio only.

One weakness of audio fiction, or a trope of audio fiction, is that sometimes you need the narrator to describe the action, or a character to exclaim that the monsters are behind you, or something, so that the listener can follow along. But with spatial audio, you just place the monsters behind the listener and let them experience it themselves.

I think audio is less limited than video in some respects, because audio can use the imagination of the listener, whereas in video you’re telling the viewer exactly what it is. And often what the visual is is not as spectacular as what the listener might have imagined. So it’s like when a viewer is disappointed with the character design of the film adaptation of their favourite book, for instance.

So I think the real challenge is still about building the willingness in people to take on listening as a prime-time activity, to stop scrolling or passively watching Netflix, and put on headphones in a good listening environment and give it their full attention like they would a film. And I think that’s on us as producers to produce quality, immersive content that rewards the listener for taking the audio seriously.

Q. What advice do you have for anyone who would like to get into 3D audio production? Can you point them to any useful resources?

The first thing to do is determine whether you prefer the raw live sound of spatial recording versus the more polished sound of working with spatial audio in post-production.

You can find examples of spatial recording by searching YouTube for “binaural head” or “ambisonic” recordings. And then, of course, for post-production sound, you can check out stuff on owlfield.com.

Each has pros and cons, not just for the resulting sound but also for the start-up cost, the production, the post workflow, and the ability to edit, so deciding what works best for you is the essential first step.

Apart from that, I think my top tip is about the depth of the soundscape. To create realism, we want to imitate how we hear in real life as best we can, so things that are close are loud, and things that are far away are quiet. If this isn’t the case, the soundscape won’t sound realistic, and the immersion suffers.

That sounds easy enough, but the problem is that we can’t control the listener’s listening environment—they might be using a cheap set of earbuds on a bus—so if you make something quiet, the listener might not be able to hear it at all. Therefore, it’s necessary to consider the balancing act between creating realism and ensuring critical sounds aren’t lost.

Q. Finally, you mentioned cheap earbuds on a bus. Do you have any tips for optimising the 3D listening experience?

Well, the first thing to say is that a binaural experience will work on any pair of stereo headphones – even with a cheap pair of earbuds, you’ll get a sense of the surrounding soundscape.

It’s similar to other types of listening, though, in that if you’re listening to music on the bus, you won’t catch much detail unless you’ve got some decent headphones on. So, I’d say it depends on the listener. Sure, you can watch a film on your phone, but it is much more captivating on the big screen. For me, 3D audio content is definitely worth putting in whatever effort you can to shut out any surrounding distraction, so either a quiet space in your home or some noise-cancelling headphones during a commute.

Shutting your eyes also improves the 3D effect dramatically, in that the realism of the audio isn’t damaged by conflicting with what you’re seeing.

Thank you so much for your time, Michel!

With 3D Audio, You’re Never in the Same Sound Space Twice

The point of this whirlwind guide to 3D audio wasn’t to convince you to rush out and make your own binaural production (though it’d be fantastic if you did). Obviously, for most non-fiction shows where the focus is on the conversation, 3D audio wouldn’t just be overkill; It’d be outright jarring for your listeners.

Really, this is just part of our ongoing exploration into what is possible with audio. We want to continue to highlight exciting and innovative ways you can work with and present sound. Video definitely has its earned place at the podcasting table, but there is so much more to come from the realm of creative audio. Sometimes, the answer to “What next?” is the development and evolution of what you’re already doing rather than starting from scratch in a whole new medium.

So check out What Podcasts Do for Your Brain, and keep on exploring!

Overcast: A Podcast App That Perfects the Art of Listening

Lindsay Harris Friel — Tue, 06 Aug 2024 07:00:00 +0000

Among people who are serious about podcasts, Overcast is a favorite iOS listening app. You may not have heard of it, but that’s about to change. Overcast focuses on what the user wants to pay attention to, not what the parent company wants to promote. Podcast listeners can easily find the shows they want and customize their listening experience. That’s good for the audience, and since your audience wants to come back for more, great for podcasters. And now, it has a new interface to celebrate ten years of podcast listening goodness.

What Makes Overcast Different From Other Podcast Listening Apps?

Typically, when you open any podcast directory, the home screen shows what the directory wants to promote. If you’re easily distracted (like me), it’s a huge drag to get past the shows they want to promote and find the shows I want. But Overcast’s user interface gets me to the shows I want right away. I can tailor each podcast’s listening experience to fit my needs. And, the new search tools help me find more of what I want fast.

Smart Playlists

Many podcast-listening apps let you create playlists. But Overcast has a Smart Playlists feature that downloads the latest episode of the shows you choose directly to that queue. The appealing color palette and library of icons help you curate an audio library that updates itself.

Overcast’s smart playlists make it easier to listen to podcasts using the Apple Watch. When my dog wants to go out, I need to grab the leash, earbuds, and house keys immediately, if not sooner. Overcast gives me a huge relief knowing there’s a queue of favorite podcasts, ready to go on my watch. When I listen to sleep podcasts, Overcast’s Apple Watch interface makes it easy to adjust playback without having to fumble for my phone. And, there’s even a jailbreak-style game in the watch version of Overcast.

Custom Playback Settings

Most podcast-listening apps allow you to adjust the playback speed and amount of time that you can skip forward or back. Not only does Overcast help you with length of skip time and player speed, but also:

Voice Boost helps the speaker’s voice stand out. This is brilliant for “I like the content but hate the audio” shows where poor recording or mixing makes them hard to follow.
You can set a podcast’s playback to skip a podcast’s intro or ending, and you can get right to the good stuff faster. When you consume a lot of episodes in the same series at once, do you need to hear the opening music every time? Binge-listeners rejoice!
One switch helps you maintain the settings for a podcast’s playback without affecting other shows’ audio.

Search Tools

In the old Overcast, you could type in the search box, and the app would fetch the podcasts you already follow with episodes that include that information. It would then display some relevant podcasts you haven’t followed yet. You could also search within a podcast’s episodes to find specific information. I’d give the search tools a 3 out of 5.

However, when you click on the search results, the interface doesn’t always show you the episode you found, but the entire list of episodes for that podcast. It was a disconcerting hiccup. You’d have to do another search within the podcast’s episodes to find the information you want.

Which brings us to the improvements.

What Makes The New Overcast Better?

I am not a developer, nor do I play one on TV. However, I can tell you that the improved coding makes Overcast a faster app. From the second you open the app, load times are a flash, and clicks feel more responsive. The four big noticeable changes are:

More direct navigation, with fewer clicks, to get to the podcast you want.
Getting to the specific content you want is simpler, too: now you can undo a large skip.
Search is more granular, with guided steps to narrow search results.
Streaming is eliminated: episodes only download, and it’s not bad news.

Let me show you the details.

Consolidated Screen Layout

More options fit on the screen at one time, so you can make choices with less scrolling.

If you (like me) listen to part of a podcast, get interrupted, and can’t go back to podcast listening until long after your mood has changed, you’ll love the “Recently Played” buttons at the top of the screen. Overcast’s playlist row uses side-scrolling, so your first few playlists are right there, and the buttons to create new playlists are equally clear.

Undo a Large Seek

Chance Miller, editor-in-chief of 9 to 5 Mac, said the ability to undo a large seek was one of his favorite new Overcast features. “If you accidentally skip too far forward or backward in an episode, you’ll see a small button appear in Overcast that will undo the seek. This is particularly useful if you accidentally change your playback position via the Now Playing controls on the Lock Screen.” If you’re shoving your phone into a pocket while listening, this is a huge help.

At first, I thought Miller said, “undo a large steek,” and my brain nearly exploded. If anyone can undo the process of slicing knit stitches, it would be miraculous. Fortunately, I was wrong.

Search: Overcast Goes With You

As I said before, Overcast’s search function was always a gamble. If you found what you wanted on the top level, you’d have to search for it again within a podcast’s feed. Now, the process guides you through the steps to find the episode you want.

As an example, I searched in Overcast for “John Hodgman.” The Hodgemeister has been on a lot of podcasts, most notably one with his name in the title. Here’s the first set of results.

The top two shows are ones I already follow, and his name is in the title, the description, or both. The remainder, under “More Podcasts,” are shows that I don’t subscribe to, but the words “John Hodgman” are in the show description.

What if the search term isn’t in the title or the show’s description?

I don’t follow any podcasts with the words “morse code” in the title or show description. If I type “morse code” into the search engine, the search results only display shows under the category “More Podcasts.” But if I tap on “My Episodes,” Overcast’s search tools show me episodes of podcasts that I already follow that have “morse code” in the episode’s show notes.

Again, Overcast’s new interface does a great job of helping you find what you want to listen to, not what a directory or tech company wants to promote.

Streaming Inefficiencies, Begone!

Overcast no longer has a streaming option. Creator Marco Arment explained that dynamic ad insertion makes streaming a less enjoyable user experience. “For example, if the first half of an episode downloads, then the download fails, and it downloads the second half with another request, the combined audio may jump forward or back at the halfway mark, losing or repeating content.” Arment’s attention to detail and appreciation for the user experience, as well as podcast integrity, are admirable.

Episodes download over Wi-Fi or wait in a queue until you open them, and the speed is pleasantly surprising. I live in a city with fast internet, but I tried downloading an episode with Wi-Fi turned off, only using the cellular signal. A 51-minute episode of We’re Alive took 5 seconds to completely empty itself into my phone.

Yes, I counted.

The old Overcast made me update my playlists when I had reliable internet access. Either I had to plan ahead, or wait longer to download my shows before leaving the house in the morning. The new Overcast downloads podcasts so quickly, even with a cellular signal, you might not even notice.

Overcast’s Pricing and Ads

When it comes to podcast listening apps, you either pay with your wallet or your attention span. In other words, you can buy the premium version to use the app without distractions, or you can have ads, and get Overcast’s unmatched service, ad-free.

In this way, Overcast benefits both podcasters and casual listeners. The app is free for casual listeners, but power users can subscribe to the premium version for $10 a year.

The sole difference between the two is that the free version runs small banner ads for different podcasts at the bottom of the app’s display window. The ads aren’t terribly intrusive. They don’t block controls or encroach on the user experience. More importantly, they’re relevant to the podcast in play. It’s more of a helpful suggestion than a distraction.

For podcasters, Overcast’s advertising program is the best in its class. The ads are reasonably priced, depending on genre and demand, and targeted to the category you choose. When a user clicks on the ad, they go right to the podcast.

You may not have even noticed the ad in this screenshot at first. No muss, no fuss, straight to the goal.

The Best Tenth Birthday Present Is a Strong Start for the Future.

The year I turned ten, the Phillies finally won the World Series, Ronald Reagan was elected President, and John Lennon died. I became acutely aware that big changes could happen overnight. Overcast entered its tenth year with some flaws, yet it was still better than most podcast-listening apps. Now, Overcast goes out with self-awareness, responsibility, and a solid foundation for improvement.

Overcast’s creator (and the entire production team), Marco Arment, said, “For Overcast to have a future, it needed a modern foundation for its second decade. I’ve spent the past 18 months rebuilding most of the app… Now, development is rapidly accelerating. I’m more responsive, iterating more quickly and ultimately making the app much better.

Thank you all so much for the first decade of Overcast.”

Thank you, Marco Arment, for making Overcast’s tenth year an opportunity to make podcasts better for everyone.

What’s your favorite podcast listening app? Why is it the right fit for you? Come join us in our IndiePod Community, and tell us what your favorite portal to podcast-listening enjoyment is, and why. We’d love to hear from you.

How to Download Podcasts to Your Apple Watch: Watch & Listen!

Lindsay Harris Friel — Tue, 30 Jul 2024 06:00:00 +0000

Do you remember what it’s like to walk a dog on a leash while wearing wired headphones? I used to have to juggle my keys, iPod, wired earbuds, FitBit, flip phone, the dog’s leash, and the dog. Now, the Apple Watch replaces most of what I need while out and about, and the dog and I can appreciate the walk together. I wasn’t able to enjoy my podcast choices right away, though. Once you know the details of how to download podcasts to your Apple Watch, it seems easy. But, a few obstacles can get in the way. I’ll show you how to get around them, so you can have podcast-listening freedom anywhere you go.

Sync Your Podcast-Listening Devices

Before you do anything else, check to make sure your iPhone is compatible with your Apple Watch. To avoid potential snags, your iPhone and Apple Watch should have the latest operating system installed.

Your Apple Watch can play podcasts over a Wi-Fi or cellular connection or podcasts stored on the device itself. But, first, you have to connect your watch to wireless headphones or speakers (via Bluetooth) and make sure you have a compatible podcast-listening app.

Sync your iPhone and your Apple Watch to make sure the devices are communicating effectively.

How to Pair Headphones, Earbuds, or Speakers With Your Apple Watch

Press the side button to open the Control Center.

Scroll until you see the Audio Output symbol.

When your headphones are in pairing mode, choose the device you want to use.

Yes, I named my over-the-ear Bose headphones for Lieutenant Uhura. I also have a pair of inexpensive Heyday earbuds from Target for dog walks, public transit, and other places where I’m likely to lose things. Don’t judge.

After this, your headphones should automatically connect to your Apple Watch whenever they’re turned on.

Set Up Your Favorite Podcast Listening App for Apple Watch

Needless to say, Apple Podcasts is the simplest podcast-listening app to use on the Apple Watch. But, many of our recommended podcast listening apps are compatible with Apple Watch, including Overcast, Spotify, and Pocket Casts. I prefer Overcast for many reasons, so I’ll use that as an example, as well.

Whichever listening app you choose:

Download (or update) the latest version on your phone.
Connect your watch to wi-fi. Put it in the charger, and let it sync with your phone.
Then, open the watch app on your iPhone. Find the listening app, and tap on it. You should see a switch that says “Show app on Apple Watch.”
Flip the switch so that it’s green. This should get everything matched up.

How to Download Podcasts to Your Apple Watch

Your watch can work as a controller while your phone is nearby, streaming or playing a downloaded podcast episode. But, sometimes, you have to go out without your phone. Yes, I know this may be hard to believe.

If your watch has a cellular connection, you can stream your episodes through it. But if you don’t have an unlimited data plan, this could be a bad idea. So, what about downloading episodes directly to your watch?

Apple Podcasts and Apple Watch

First, make sure that you’re ‘following’ the podcast you want in Apple Podcasts on your iPhone. Also, make sure that your earbuds, headphones, or speakers are turned on and paired.

To use Apple Podcasts on your watch, you can;

Pick a suggested episode from the Home screen
Tap the left < button, select Library, then scroll to select a show. You can play the latest episode, or scroll to select a specific episode.
You can also select a podcast to stream. From the home screen, tap the left < button, then use the Search option.

If your watch is connected to wi-fi or cellular, you can also ask Siri to play a particular podcast. However, Siri only streams the latest episode of that podcast, it doesn’t download, and it doesn’t pick a particular episode.

The Settings Menu on your watch helps you specify what you want Apple Podcasts to do on your watch. You can:

Choose how many episodes to download while your watch syncs
Customize skip buttons and external controls (such as play, pause, and next)
Set up or take down continuous playback. This function is great for driving or exercising but not so much for sleeping.

Setting Up Your Apple Watch To Download Apple Podcasts Episodes

Start with the Apple Watch app on your iPhone.

Open the Apple Podcasts sub-menu. Click on the Up Next button and select the number of episodes from Up Next you want to download. The same goes for the Saved list.

You can also add specific shows. Your Apple Watch will try to download the latest unplayed episode for each show you add.

Close these to save your choices and close the watch app.

Then, open the Apple Podcasts app on your iPhone.

Tap on your Up Next playlist.

Make sure these are the episodes you want to be available on your watch. Same goes for any shows that you selected.

Then, charge your watch and let it sync.

Don’t worry about downloading every episode of every show you might want, unless you’re going on a 14-hour plane flight or you’ll be spending the night in a haunted house with no Internet connection to win a million dollars. Just grab a few episodes.

Setting Up Your Apple Watch To Download Episodes with Overcast

Overcast has a similar setup to Apple Podcasts, in that it asks you to specify what to put on your watch ahead of time before you leave your Internet connection and charger. The customizable smart playlists are just one of Overcast’s options that makes it a winning app for me. I have one playlist called “Dog Walk,” where I put shows I want to save for when Symone and I are out and about. When new episodes of the podcasts I’ve chosen for that list are available, they automatically show up.

Overcast doesn’t have a settings option in the Apple Watch menu on the iPhone. You have to make any playlist changes in the Overcast app on your phone or watch. This is a little tricky because Overcast only syncs and downloads when the Apple Watch is charging and connected to Wi-Fi. You may find yourself holding your watch in the charger and unlocking it repeatedly every time the screen goes back to the clock view.

First, use the Overcast app on your iPhone to make a playlist for the shows you want to download to your watch (e.g., “Dog Walk”).

Next, put your Overcast app in the charger and make sure it’s connected to wi-fi.

Open the Overcast app.

Tap the gear symbol to go to Settings.

Choose the playlist you want to have available on your watch.

By default, Overcast will download the first 20 episodes in that playlist to your watch, as it looks when you view it on your phone. Again, it will only download while your Apple Watch is charging and connected to wi-fi. Depending on how big those episode files are, this could take a while. Plan your Apple Watch playlist accordingly!

Overcast’s creator, Marco Arment, added a jailbreak-style game that you can play while downloading episodes. This keeps the screen open and the app active during download, and it’s fun.

If All Else Fails

If you’re having trouble downloading podcasts to your Apple Watch, try one of these tips:

Do you have too many apps open? Double-press the crown button on your Apple Watch. A “stack” of the currently open apps appears. Then, swipe left on each to close the apps you don’t want to use right now. This way, your watch isn’t using memory and energy to hold these apps open for you.

Is Handoff turned on? Handoff is a feature that lets you start a task (like composing a Note) on one of your Apple devices, and finish it on another. This can be useful when you’re working on your podcast, like if you want to listen to a file while walking outdoors.

By default, Handoff is on, but you may want to check this if you have trouble syncing your podcasts. Open your iPhone’s Settings, go to General, then AirPlay and Handoff. You can do the same in Settings on your watch.

Have you tried turning it off and on again? Laugh if you must, but this tried and true remedy often works a treat. Press the side button on your Apple Watch until sliders appear. Press the power icon on the screen, and let your watch power down. Wait a minute or so, and then press and hold the side button again.

I had trouble getting episodes to download to my watch and play for more than two or three seconds until I tried turning my watch off and on again. Your mileage may vary. Apple Support has tons of resources for you, updated frequently.

Streamline Your Podcast Listening Experience with Apple Watch

I used to commute to university via subway and transfer from one line to another via a multi-level Escher-like subterranean maze. It was always crowded, and everyone was in a hurry. The last thing you want to do in that kind of maze is fumble around for your phone just because you want to skip a sports betting ad. Once I was able to download podcasts to my Apple Watch, I felt safer and saner on my commute.

You may want to listen to your podcasts on your watch while traveling with luggage and/or kids, doing chores, or anywhere your hands are full. It’s also nice to listen to podcasts before going to sleep and control the volume or playback through your watch without having to grab your phone from the nightstand or wherever. When you take time in advance to download your podcasts to your Apple Watch, that’s effort saved while listening.

Be sure to check out our dedicated Podcast Listening section for more tips on how and where to get your favourite podcasts. If you have children, you might also want to check out the Yoto Player – a brilliant screen-free audio player that you can load up on these podcasts for kids. A certain fellow writer here at The Podcast Host’s three-year-old daughter swears by it!

What Do Podcasts Do for Your Brain?

Lindsay Harris Friel — Thu, 20 Jun 2024 07:00:00 +0000

In 2016, Freakonomics host Steven Dubner took a deep dive into the neuroscience behind why podcast listening is a unique experience. While listening to a story, different areas of the brain light up all at once, and your brain gets a semantic coding workout. Eight years later, this story still sparks my curiosity. It’s not simply semantic coding, however. Podcasts do a lot more for the human brain: a balance between rest and activity, a sense of closeness, and turning humdrum activities into special rituals.

How can we harness these findings to make podcasts more exciting?

Neuroaesthetics: How Art Affects The Brain

Neuroaesthetics is the study of how and why sensory experiences (such as images or textures) affect our brains.

To examine how this works in the auditory realm, we might have someone listen to a piece of spoken word audio while lying in an MRI machine, and see how the audio content affects them.

Natural Speech and The Human Cerebral Cortex, or Talking and Brains

This was, in fact, the subject of Freakonomics episode 262, from October 2016. Dubner interviewed Jack Gallant, a psychology professor and computational and cognitive neuroscientist at The University of California, Berkeley. Gallant and his coauthors showed how spoken audio in the form of a story stimulates the parts of the brain where we make sense of language.

“We’re measuring changes in blood flow and blood oxygen at 50,000 or so different locations across the cerebral cortex while they listen to these stories,” Gallant told Dubner, “to figure out, for each location in the brain that we measured, what information in the stories is driving activity at that location in the brain.” Gallant said that the most surprising finding is that “semantic information, the meaning of the stories, is represented broadly across much of the brain. All of those various areas of the brain represent different aspects of semantic information, in these really complicated maps that are very, very rich but fairly consistent across different individuals.”

Gallant and his team learned that when we listen to a story, different parts of our brains that handle different kinds of meaning go to work. Words aren’t solely one-to-one signifiers. When we hear a word, our feelings about its meaning come along to clarify the significance. In a story, metaphor endows a word with multiple meanings, in the context of the story and the listener’s context. So, this activates different areas of the brain simultaneously.

Not all podcasts are stories, however. And podcasts can do a lot more for us than match words with meaning. Listening to an audio story affects your whole body and mind, even though we barely notice these effects. This article will look at a range of other ways podcasts energize our neural functioning.

Sound, Context, and Emotion

Kinda Studios is “a creative science studio using neuroscience to prove the power of art on human connection and wellbeing.” They study more than what words mean when we hear them; they also study the effect of light, sound, color, and more. This company uses neuroaesthetics to create audiovisual installations and immersive experiences for brands like KIA or Diageo. In a series of interviews for the podcast Fresh Ears, Robin Landau and Catherine Templar Lewis, the team behind Kinda Studios, discussed what long-form audio does for people, and why.

Long-Form Audio Uniquely Commands Attention

Most people enjoy listening to podcasts while doing other activities, such as chores or exercise. Why is this experience satisfying instead of distracting?

Podcasts Help You Focus

Podcasts let parts of your brain relax while the audio-processing parts of your brain do the work. When we hear the phrase “pay attention,” we often imagine focusing on something, like a flashlight on a target. However, recent research indicates that when the brain pays attention to something, it spends more energy filtering out distractions than it does focusing on stimuli. As the team from Kinda Studios said, podcast listening lets you “take a lot of the attention you’d be just putting on things that might catch your eye, and you get to filter them out.”

Podcasts Prompt or Trigger Mental Imagery

Most people make mental pictures while listening to stories with visual detail. Even when we hear a nonverbal sound (such as glass breaking), an image can pop up in our minds. These mental pictures provide clues about what to expect. If I hear a glass fall on my kitchen floor and break, the picture in my head tells me to grab a broom and make sure I’m wearing shoes. If I hear a window pane breaking late at night, the mental image makes me grab my phone and get ready to swipe for an emergency call. Both images, though different, help me stay safe.

When we conjure these mental images, our personal context colors them in. For example, if I say the phrase “a handsome prince,” you might think of The Prince of Wales, Prince Eric from The Little Mermaid, or Prince Rogers Nelson of “Purple Rain” fame. If you said ”handsome prince” to people from different countries or generations, the images would change. The words “handsome prince” would carry different emotions and memories along with them in different contexts.

Since we construct mental pictures through our memories and lived experiences, the mental movies we unintentionally create feel personally meaningful to us. As the Kinda Studios team said, “You’ve put more of yourself into (the podcast) because you’re actually making your own creative choices to choose what that character looks like.” This context makes the spoken words more memorable.

Podcasts Encourage Relationships

If I told you that it was possible to have the person of your choice enlighten and validate you, any time you want, you might say that kind of relationship was an impossible dream. But podcasts encourage relationships in three ways:

Simulating an intimate conversation
Accessibility and control by the audience
Breaking down and clarifying information to enhance the audience’s understanding

These elements work together to make us feel more related to the podcaster and the (unseen) rest of the podcast’s audience.

Conversation and Connection or Parasocial Relationships

When you listen to a podcast, you may feel that the conversation is just for you. The podcast listening experience feels like being in a bubble with a smart companion, particularly when you use headphones.

A 2022 study by Stephanie Tobin of the University of Queensland shows that podcasts make people feel less lonely. Tobin and her authors hypothesized that podcast listeners may have “a need to belong” or show signs of neuroses. This wasn’t the case. Study participants came to podcasts out of “openness to experience, interest-based curiosity, and need for cognition.” Over time, the study participants’ feelings about the podcasts changed. The more hours of podcasts the participants consumed, the more they felt connected to the podcast hosts.

Podcast audiences don’t consciously seek out “a simulated conversation with friends,” but over time, they experience the benefits of such a conversation.

Podcast Availability and Audience Choice

A second way that podcasts make audiences feel connected to the podcaster is recurring availability. Podcasts have been called “audio on demand.” The foundation of the relationship is the audience’s choice to download and listen. The Kinda Studios team said, “We use the word intimacy a lot around podcasts… because when you choose to listen it’s an active process.” The podcast listener makes an active choice to consume the show in a particular time and environment. The relationship between the listener and the podcast episode is secure. And, if the podcast doesn’t deliver new episodes, the listener is free to move on.

Podcasts Can Explain at the Audience’s Pace

Podcasts tackle complicated topics, break them into parts, and examine them closely from different angles. This measured examination aids understanding, which supports and validates the audience’s learning process. Some writers call this “hand-holding.” Podcasts don’t have to adhere to the strict time constraints that radio does. So, podcasters can use pacing, music, and sound effects to illuminate ideas. As the audience fills in mental pictures with their own context, the podcaster-audience relationship builds a sense of cooperative exploration, further encouraging an emotional bond.

In Podcasting: The Audio Media Revolution, by Martin Spinelli and Lance Dann, the authors wrote, “Hand-holding has been a fairly common criticism of a number of American projects (particularly This American Life) for some time now….it unconsciously links two often-disparaged aspects of an American audio production style: an affinity for personal closeness and a very strong attachment to clear narrative structures.”

In short, the services that are simplest for a friend to provide, are now done in part by podcasts.

Podcasts Can Become Rituals Via Habit Stacking

Every day, we have to do things that we don’t feel like doing. Whether it’s the washing up or driving from place to place, everyone has chores they’d prefer to avoid. Podcasts make those habitual tasks special by activating our brains’ reward chemicals.

When we listen to podcasts, our brains go through a neurochemical ballet as we follow the structure we’ve come to expect. Podcasts that rely on structure can be satisfying because the audience knows what mental ritual they’ll go through.

Robin Landau and Catherine Templar Lewis of Kinda Studios said, “[Dopamine is] the reward chemical that we give ourselves to reward ourselves often for learning something new… our brains love the pattern of it, and they release all this dopamine, which tells us that we’ve worked this story out…and that dopamine actually can be part of the reason it spurs us to action because it motivates us to act on what we’ve heard.”

When we add a podcast, our run-of-the-mill daily activities become more exciting. Washing dishes or walking the dog becomes an adventure, and we feel energized as a result.

Podcasts’ Big Risk: Audio Quality

Another way podcasts affect the brain is by making listeners less tolerant of unclear audio. Gen X and older may be used to listening to news through radio static. The cracks and pops of a treasured vinyl record may make a song more nostalgic. Digital audio, though, doesn’t compete with electronic activity or scratches.

As we’ve learned so far, listening to a podcast is like inviting a guest into your home. We relax and open up to a new experience presented in a familiar way. This takes a lot of trust. When that guest comes with baggage, we feel drained.

Is it any wonder that poor audio quality can kill a podcast?

According to a 2018 study by USC and the Australian National University, the quality of audio influences whether you believe what you hear. Program director Norbert Schwarz summarized, “When you make it difficult for people to process information, it becomes less credible.”

Study participants listened to two-to-three-minute interviews from NPR’s Science Friday with altered sound quality. Co-author Eryn Newman said, “As soon as we reduced the audio quality, all of a sudden, the scientists and their research lost credibility.” Newman and Schwarz found that as soon as material required extra effort on the part of the participants, they trusted it less. Respondents rated clear information as more reliable.

Remember, the brain wants to preserve energy and spends more effort filtering out contradictory stimuli. So, when the audio medium presents the smallest obstacle, audiences are more likely to reject it.

Okay, Hotshot, What About Video?

Despite claims that video podcasts are the way of the future, user data indicates that video podcasts aren’t replacing audio, and are unlikely to.

A study by University College London, sponsored by Audible UK, found that our bodies react more to audio alone than video and audio together. Researchers made study participants watch part of a movie or television version of a well-known story and listen to an audiobook version of the same part of that story. Study participants said they felt video had more impact. But their physiological responses told a different tale.

While watching video or listening to audio, the study participants wore wrist sensors to measure their heart rates, electrodermal activity, and body temperature. All these physiological responses rose while the participants listened solely to audio. But, the responses weren’t significant while watching and listening at the same time.

According to the abstract, “We interpret these findings as evidence that the stories were more cognitively and emotionally engaging at a physiological level when presented in an auditory format. This may be because listening to a story, rather than watching a video, is a more active process of co-creation.” Recall the “handsome prince” example mentioned earlier, and how memory and experience provide context.

In sum, consuming video and audio together is a more passive experience. Audio alone is more active.

3D Audio: The Immersion of Binaural Sound

How You Can Make Your Podcast More Stimulating

What do podcasts do for your brain? To recap, podcasts can:

aid focus by allowing part of the brain to take a little break
encourage co-creation: the podcast’s text provides shapes for the audience to fill with their context
provide ritual
stave off loneliness
build engagement

4 Tips to Create More Compelling Podcasts

1. Don’t worry about video, unless cinematography is your calling. Let your audience give part of their brain a rest.

2. Prompt mental imagery with metaphor and different kinds of sound. Use music to set a mood, tell a story with distinct people, places, and events, and describe them in sensory detail to spark your audience’s imagination and bring your podcast’s topic to life. If you enjoy sound design, sound effects can add magic to the stories in your show.

3. Be consistent. Consistency helps people associate your podcast with other habits. If you need to take a break, let your audience know. Fill in your release schedule gaps with gems from your back catalog, or swap episodes with a like-minded podcast. Your podcast could be the ritual that helps your audience relax at the end of a long day, or get excited about something new. If your show keeps coming back, the audience will.

4. Take your audio seriously. This doesn’t mean spending a fortune on an expensive mic and pro-level studio. Your audio can sound first-class even on a very tight budget. Check out our podcast recording guide for a load of tips, tactics, and tools on that front.

Make Your Podcast Magnetic

When his 2016 UC Berkeley study recruited participants, Jack Gallant said, “This is the only MRI experiment we’ve ever done where we didn’t have to pay people to be in the study. They were just happy to lie there and listen to the stories.”

Humans all want stories, particularly when they can fill in the blanks with their own experiences and context. Consistency, clarity, and compassion can make your podcast reverberate worldwide.

How to Subscribe to or Follow a Podcast (& Why You Should!)

Colin Gray — Wed, 12 Jun 2024 07:55:00 +0000

This is the third and final part of our ‘listeners guide to podcasting’, in which you’ll find out exactly what the benefits are of subscribing to or following a podcast, and how to do it. That includes how to subscribe to a podcast in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube, and how to apply that to pretty much any other podcasting app. If you’re getting into podcasting, then here’s how to subscribe and make it super easy to listen regularly.

Now that you know the answer to “What is a podcast?” and how to listen to a podcast on any device, let’s look at the world of podcast subscriptions. This is the big difference between standard audio files and the exciting world of podcasting: the act of the subscribe!

Before we get started, we need to talk briefly about the word “subscribe” because it’s actually more common for listening apps to use the term “follow” these days.

Even Apple Podcasts – the ultimate place to “subscribe to a podcast” throughout most of the medium’s history – switched to “follow” in recent years. Today, Apple uses the word “subscribe” to signify paying for a premium podcast instead. For all free content (the vast majority of stuff on there), you’d “follow” it to get new episodes delivered automatically.

Confused? Hopefully not. But it’s a shame Apple couldn’t have picked a word other than “subscribe” for their paywalled content. Ah well.

In any case, we’re focussing 100% on the free, here. And because some other listening apps still opt for the term “subscribe”, we’ll use it interchangeably with “follow” in this post.

Sound good? Alright, “follow” along to this next section, then

When you subscribe to a podcast, it changes your relationship from searching to receiving. As soon as you’ve subscribed, you no longer have to keep track of all your favourite podcasts. You no longer have to go out there and search for new episodes. You no longer have to remember what you’ve listened to, or where you left off.

Instead, your podcast app will keep track of everything related to your favourite podcasts!

New episodes will come directly to your phone, automatically. Every time you open the app, they’ll be there, waiting. Depending on your settings, they might even be downloaded already, so you’re all set to listen for a few hours on the plane, entirely offline.

Any podcast app worth its salt will offer up an easy way to subscribe to a podcast, and then to keep track of those subscriptions. That makes following and listening to your favourite shows as easy as falling off a log!

So, how do we carry out this witchcraft? How do we start to make our listening life super easy? Well, it depends on your app. Here’s how it works on the top three, plus a process for doing it in another app on the market.

How to Follow a Podcast in Apple Podcasts (iPhone Default)

How to Follow a Podcast in Apple Podcasts

Apple Podcasts is one of the most popular podcast-listening platforms. There are versions for iPhone, desktop, and Apple Watch. They can sync their settings using your Apple account, so it’s a decent environment for your listening if you do it across different devices.

Here’s how to follow a podcast in Apple Podcasts on your iPhone:

Tap ‘search’ inside the Apple Podcasts app
Type a podcast name or topic into the search bar, and ensure ‘All Podcasts’ is selected
Tap the podcast you’d like to subscribe to
Tap the icon in the top right corner, which will appear as a + symbol or ‘Follow’ button.
You’re now subscribed to the podcast!
Tap Library to see your current subscriptions and start listening.

How to Follow a Podcast on Spotify

How to Follow a podcast on Spotify

Spotify is one of the fastest-growing podcast-listening apps on the market. It combines all of your favourite audio, from music to podcasting, so you can see why it’s popular, and the app is refining the listening experience on a regular basis.

The fact that it’s not podcast-specific means it lacks some of the power features of other listening apps, but it can still be a great place to listen.

Here’s how to follow a podcast on Spotify:

Click search inside the Spotify app
Type a podcast name or topic into the search field
If you’re searching for a specific podcast, click on its name
If you’re searching a topic, tap the ‘Podcasts’ link to split out full shows and individual episodes.
Click on your podcast of choice
Tap on the ‘follow’ link, top left, right below the podcast artwork
Success! You’re subscribed.
To listen, tap ‘Your Library’ > ‘Podcasts and courses’, and choose a show to start playing.

What About Subscribing on Google Podcasts?

Google Podcasts was the distant third-placed podcast listening platform for a good few years. With an average of 2.5-3% of total podcast consumption taking place there, it was a long way behind Apple and Spotify, though still significant in its own way.

Being a Google app means you’re always looking over your shoulder, though, and poor old Google Podcasts was killed off in early 2024. That’s likely because Google now wants to focus their podcasting efforts on YouTube instead…

Subscribing to YouTube channels is no new thing, and if you do that, you’ll get all of the content uploaded there. But what if you only want to subscribe to that creator to get their podcast episodes?

At the time of writing, that still requires the creator to have consciously set up and marked this content as “a podcast”. To check if they have, click on their username and then the “Podcasts” tab in their channel.

If you see a podcast playlist and want to subscribe to it, click “View full podcast” then on the little + button and “Save playlist”. It’ll now appear in the “You” tab of your YouTube account.

You can subscribe to podcasts in the YouTube Music app, too, if you use it. Both YouTube and YouTube Music have overall “Podcasts” tabs where you can search for new content, so you don’t necessarily need to look for a particular show on there!

If you’re going with a different app, from Pocketcasts to Overcast, the process is generally similar to Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

Just find the search button, type in the topic or the podcast name, and choose the one you like. The subscribe option will always be labelled something like ‘Subscribe’ or ‘Follow’. And from there, you’re off to the races! Browse your library, and start listening.

Remember to take a look at all our recommended podcast listening apps for iPhone & Android if you’ve not picked a ‘podcatcher’ yet. There are loads of great options out there.

Podcast App Icons & Links

By the way, if you’re planning to start your own podcast and looking to make it easy for listeners to subscribe or follow, then check out pod.link. This handy platform creates links to all the popular listening platforms on one single page. We use it for our daily ‘how to podcast’ series Pocket-Sized Podcasting.

In the event that you’ve discovered a podcast but it doesn’t appear in your podcasting app’s search directory, then it’s still possible to subscribe. It just takes a few extra steps. The first step in subscribing to a podcast manually is to track down that podcast’s RSS feed URL.

The RSS feed is a unique link that contains all the details of the podcast’s past episodes. Don’t worry, though, you don’t need to know how a podcast feed works, you just need to find its web address, which is normally quite easy.

Most podcast websites will have a ‘Subscribe’ icon somewhere on the front page. That’ll often give you the option to look at the Podcast RSS feed page, amongst some of the automatic subscription links for Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

Click it, and you’ll hopefully see a whole bunch of code, called XML. Again, don’t worry about this – all you need is the address of the page, which you can copy from the address bar. It’ll look something like this:

https://feeds.alitu.com/36905103

Here’s an example of where to find the RSS feed URL on an Alitu-hosted site.

Select that URL in the address bar and copy it, then transfer it into your podcast listening app. Most apps will allow you to paste the URL into the search bar, and load up the podcast. From there, you can hit the ‘follow’ or ‘subscribe’ button, as shown on the Apple Podcasts or Spotify guides above.

If you’re struggling to find a podcast’s own webpage, then try searching for it on Podchaser. You’ll find a link to the RSS feed by scrolling down the page – it’s on the right-hand side above “Podcast Details”.

Subscribing to or Following a Podcast: FAQs

Each time we update this ‘how to follow a podcast’ guide, we like to try to answer some frequently asked questions that weren’t fully covered previously. Let’s take a look…

Which Devices Can I Use to Subscribe to or Follow a Podcast?

In this era of “the internet of things”, what can’t you use to subscribe to or follow a podcast? Smartphones, computers, and tablets are, unsurprisingly, the source of most podcast listening. Smart speakers (like Alexa) and Apple Watches are also in the mix, though much less common. The bottom line is that any device which lets you download and install apps should enable you to follow and listen to podcasts.

If you’re a fan of video podcasts (less common, but a growing medium), then it goes without saying that you’ll need a device with a suitable screen to watch on, too.

I’m Following! How Much Time for New Episodes to Appear on My Screen?

If your favourite podcast producer promises new episodes on Tuesdays at 8 a.m., does that mean you’ll have the earbuds in by 8:01? In years gone by, definitely not. The time it took for new episodes to arrive in listening apps was a common gripe amongst podcasters and podcast listeners alike. Fortunately, these days, it’s a lot better. Spotify seemed to spur Apple into action, meaning you can usually see new episodes in your feed within 5-10 minutes of publishing.

That might not be the instantaneous file delivery we’re used to in 2024, but if you have a handful of favourite podcasts queued up to listen to, then you’ll probably survive for a few more minutes. That said, you can try to prompt an update in some apps (eg, Apple Podcasts and Overcast) by holding your finger on the list of episodes and pulling them downwards.

What About Paid Podcast Subscriptions?

As mentioned at the beginning of this guide, Apple Podcasts now use the term “subscribe” for the paid and premium content on the platform, replacing it with “follow” for its freemium podcasts. If you’re interested in learning more about this, then we have posts on Apple Podcasts subscriptions and how to sell podcast episodes.

Apple isn’t the only platform with exclusive or premium content available, either. You’ll also find it on Spotify, Audible, and via crowdfunding platforms such as Patreon.

I hope you’ve found our ‘listener’s guide to podcast‘ helpful. We’ve covered why subscribing to or following a podcast is a great thing, and how to do it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube and any other app. Next time someone asks, “What’s a podcast?” you’ll be all set to extoll your wisdom!

If you want to take your podcast listening to the next level, here are a few resources that might help, from a new set of cans, to some great shows to listen to. Have fun, and enjoy the world of podcasting!

The Best Headphones for Listening to Podcasts
Best Audio Drama Podcasts
Best Space Podcasts
Best Podcasts for Kids
Best Video Game Podcasts
Best Meditation Podcasts
How to Make Your Own Podcast (because everyone should have one!)

The Top Podcasts in the USA by Popularity (⌚ Updated Daily)

Colin Gray — Mon, 20 May 2024 15:24:47 +0000

I know, this is a tricky one. How can we judge the top podcasts in the USA, right now? Is it by production value? By entertainment value? By educational value? Or any number of the other amazing things that podcasts bring us!

Well, I’m going to take the wimp’s way out, and not judge it at all! Instead, here you’ll find a list of the top podcasts in the USA, right now, as judged by YOU and your downloads! Yes, this is a popularity contest: the most popular podcasts in the USA, this minute. True, the chart rankings are caused by many different variables. Some variables are stranger than others. May the most outrageous win.

The Top Podcasts in the USA by Download Numbers

This is a live feed, updated daily, of the most popular podcasts on Apple’s listings, right now. You’ll find the top 100 shows here. That should be enough to keep you busy for quite some time!

Remember, if you need more info on how to listen, check out the following:

How to listen to a podcast

The best headphones for listening to a podcast (or music!)

Last updated on the 13th of Jan 2025 at 09:01 am (GMT)

1. The Joe Rogan Experience

By: Joe Rogan

Genre: Comedy

Listening Archives - The Podcast Host

Podcast Statistics & Industry Trends 2025: Listens, Gear, & More

Podcast Industry Statistics

How Many Podcasts Are There, Right Now?

How Many Podcast Episodes Are There?

How Many Active Podcasts Are There?

26 Fascinating Facts About Sound: It’s Not Audio “Only”

How Humans Listen

How Animals Hear

The Record Breakers

The Super Sciencey Stuff

The Weird and Wonderful

It Isn’t “Just” Sound

3D Audio: The Immersion of Binaural Sound

What is 3D Audio?

A Brief History of 3D & Binaural Audio

Head-Related Transfer Function (HRTF)

Owl Field: 3D Audio Production

Q. Tell us about Owl Field and the type of audio you create.

Q. What was the catalyst for you becoming a binaural audio creator?

Q. How do you record and mix your productions, and has this evolved over the years?

Q. Tell us about something particularly cool or unique that you created, and are extra proud of.

Q. Have you ever dabbled in the creation of binaural beats or ASMR?

Q. Why do you think people enjoy 3D audio so much? What’s so unique about it?

Q. There’s a lot of hype around video content right now. What do you say to folks who think of audio as video’s poorer and more limited cousin?

Q. What advice do you have for anyone who would like to get into 3D audio production? Can you point them to any useful resources?

Q. Finally, you mentioned cheap earbuds on a bus. Do you have any tips for optimising the 3D listening experience?

With 3D Audio, You’re Never in the Same Sound Space Twice

Overcast: A Podcast App That Perfects the Art of Listening

What Makes Overcast Different From Other Podcast Listening Apps?

Smart Playlists

Custom Playback Settings

Search Tools

What Makes The New Overcast Better?

Consolidated Screen Layout

Undo a Large Seek

Search: Overcast Goes With You

Streaming Inefficiencies, Begone!

Overcast’s Pricing and Ads

The Best Tenth Birthday Present Is a Strong Start for the Future.

How to Download Podcasts to Your Apple Watch: Watch & Listen!

Sync Your Podcast-Listening Devices

How to Pair Headphones, Earbuds, or Speakers With Your Apple Watch

Set Up Your Favorite Podcast Listening App for Apple Watch

How to Download Podcasts to Your Apple Watch

Apple Podcasts and Apple Watch

Setting Up Your Apple Watch To Download Apple Podcasts Episodes

Setting Up Your Apple Watch To Download Episodes with Overcast

If All Else Fails

Streamline Your Podcast Listening Experience with Apple Watch

What Do Podcasts Do for Your Brain?

Neuroaesthetics: How Art Affects The Brain

Natural Speech and The Human Cerebral Cortex, or Talking and Brains

Sound, Context, and Emotion

Long-Form Audio Uniquely Commands Attention

Podcasts Help You Focus

Podcasts Prompt or Trigger Mental Imagery

Podcasts Encourage Relationships

Conversation and Connection or Parasocial Relationships

Podcast Availability and Audience Choice

Podcasts Can Explain at the Audience’s Pace

Podcasts Can Become Rituals Via Habit Stacking

Podcasts’ Big Risk: Audio Quality

Okay, Hotshot, What About Video?

How You Can Make Your Podcast More Stimulating

4 Tips to Create More Compelling Podcasts

Make Your Podcast Magnetic

How to Subscribe to or Follow a Podcast (& Why You Should!)

Wait! What IS a Subscriber? & Does “Subscribe” Mean “Follow”?

Why Should I Subscribe to a Podcast?

How to Follow a Podcast in Apple Podcasts (iPhone Default)

How to Follow a Podcast on Spotify

What About Subscribing on Google Podcasts?

How to Subscribe to a Podcast on YouTube

How to Subscribe in Other Podcast Apps

Podcast App Icons & Links

How to Subscribe to a Podcast Manually (It isn’t in the Search Directory!)

Subscribing to or Following a Podcast: FAQs

Which Devices Can I Use to Subscribe to or Follow a Podcast?

I’m Following! How Much Time for New Episodes to Appear on My Screen?