Edison Research is back with some new updated podcast listening metrics for Q4 2023. This is the third release in the series following Q2 2023 and Q3 2023 releases.

Here’s the latest data:

But to make comparisons a bit easier, here’s a table logging shows over the three releases to date:

Things to note:

• Joe Rogan is still at the top – and this predates his podcast returning to RSS and no longer being exclusive to Spotify. So expect it to continue to reign at the top of the charts for a while to come.
• Diary of a CEO remains at number 2
• The Ramseys climb one spot to number 3
• That Peter Crouch podcast drops a few spots letting in The Rest is Politics and Off Menu
• The big new entry is The Rest is Football which comes in at number 8. The Gary Lineker, Alan Shearer and Micah Richards title storms into the charts.
• Uncanny returns to the chart during a quarter when it was publishing new episodes. This title bouncing around shows what can happen to an otherwise very popular title when it’s not “always on”
• Desert Island Discs returns to the chart. It’s unclear to me why it would have left, since it’s essentially year-round.
• Newscast leapfrogs The News Agents – aside from competitiveness between comedians, the only real competition in this chart between chatty news titles
• The Girls Bathroom (no apostrophe that I can see…) is the only other new entry, which seems to have a reasonable YouTube presence.
• Dropping out of the chart this time are Growing Paynes, Stuff You Should Know, The Fellas and The Louis Theroux Podcast

Edison Research says the following about the methodology:

The Q4 2023 ranker is derived from data collected continuously during the fourth quarter of 2023, interviewing 2,402 weekly podcast consumers ages 15 and older in the U.K. Participants indicate which podcasts they listened to in the past week along with a variety of demographic, psychographic, and purchase-behavior information. This list ranks the 25 biggest podcasts based on total weekly audience reach as measured by Edison Podcast Metrics UK. 

After the third of these releases, it does seem that the top 10 is roughly set, although the new entry of The Rest is Football shows that UK podcasting is not a closed shop just yet.

If your podcast is seasonal – that is to say, not “always on” then you run the risk of a title dropping out of the charts. We’re seeing more and more counter-measures to this. For example, The Infinite Monkey Cage has run re-edited specials during “off” periods.

As ever, Edison Research has more data on these listening habits available to subscribers. But this remains a fascinating snapshot of the UK podcast listening market. In particular, the strong preference to home grown titles.