NOTE: I’ve added a significant update below (22/11/24)

You know that I love a list!

Well over the past few days, a couple more podcast charts for the UK have emerged.

First, Podtrac has released its October 2024 chart for the UK and a number of other countries. I dug deeper into Podtrac’s first chart previously, and noted some of the chart’s seeming shortcomings. Spoiler alert: there are still shortcomings.

And then there is Apple’s new list of the top podcasts of 2024 – although I should note that this link shows you the US titles. Fortunately Podnews has listed the UK titles.

The Apple list also comes with provisos. This is listening in the UK on Apple devices with Apple Podcasts. If you own an iPhone, but listen via Spotify, your listening is not counted here.

We might infer that people who own Apple devices are slightly wealthier than the norm, since the cheapest new iPhone has an RRP of £429, although it can be bought a bit cheaper than that. But there are plenty of Android phones available at much cheaper price tiers.

For interest, lets compare the Podtrac numbers, the Apple numbers and use as a reference the most recent Q2 Edison Research numbers.

For complete clarity, we’re comparing three entirely different datasets over three different periods of time, and using three different methodologies to calculate their rankings. That all said, we should probably still expect to see a little consistency. (Note that the below image will look better on laptops than mobile devices.)

The only certainty here is that The Rest is Politics is high up all three charts. The News Agents, Off Menu with Ed Gamble and James Acaster and The Rest is Football are the other consistent top 10 titles across all three charts.

There is still a massive problem with Podtrac and where they rank The Diary of a CEO with Steven Bartlett. It has actually gone down this month according to Podtrac, from #80 to #90. But the title was publishing new episodes throughout October, and was either #1 or #2 on the other charts, so this position just feels completely wrong. Also Newscast is totally missing from Podtrac’s top 100 UK titles which again is an enormous red flag.

UK Apple Podcast users are not Joe Rogan’s key fanbase. The Joe Rogan Experience does not rank in the UK Apple top 10, and indeed it only makes #5 in the US top ten rankings.

The Rest is History does better with Apple listeners compared with the other two charts, but Goalhanger overall is a massive Apple love-in. Gary Lineker’s production company has a full five of the top ten Apple podcasts in their UK chart!

It also seems that UK Apple listeners are very keen on health with the ZOE Science and Nutrition podcast and Feel Better, Live More with Dr Rangan Chatterjee both breaking into the top 10.

Right – that’s enough podcast charts for the moment – although I’m aware we’re due an Edison update soon. They just released their US Q3 chart.

Update #1 – 21/11/24: It’s probably worth reminding US readers in particular, that Podtrac is using a completely different methodology for its non-US country rankings compared with how they measure the US market using opt-in prefixes. I detailed the differences when they first published their country rankers last month. But in short, they’re attempting to measure rank everyone, regardless of whether they’re clients of Podtrac or not.

Update #2 – 22/11/24: Since first publishing this piece on Thursday, Podtrac has re-released its chart entirely, and notably it now contains a number of BBC titles, including Newscast, that were missing entirely from their previous chart. I would note that I have not been in touch with Podtrac about this.

But they have also changed a lot of other rankings as a result, so there are consequences for titles like Sh**ged Married Annoyed dropping from #15 to #22 because of BBC titles getting added back into the chart.

One major effect of adding these extra titles seems to have been pushing The Diary of a CEO with Steven Bartlett out of the chart altogether!

So for completeness, here is a revised look at the chart, comparing it with other charts/rankers. And I’m trying to be a little clearer about using the word “ranking” rather than “measure” – the latter word implying that there is some underlying data. Of course, behind the scenes some kind of estimated data is probably being produced to create the ranking, but nevertheless, I shall try to be stricter with my use of language.

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Image above created with Adobe AI using the prompt: “A panda listening to a podcast at bus stop“