On the eve of The Podcast Show in London (Note: I’ll be speaking! Come see me at 14:10 on Wednesday on the Talking Podcasts 1 Stage), Edison Research has just published its new Top 25 list for UK podcasts.
A reminder that this data is based on a survey of at least 2,000 weekly podcast listeners in the UK using the same methodology that it employs for its US survey. And the survey is based on recall, so essentially measures everything regardless of the desires of podcast networks to be included or not.
And as ever, I’ve added this update to my table of previous charts, so you can see how titles are faring over time.
The top 4 podcasts are unchanged this quarter, and Goalhanger now has four of the top ten positions with The Rest is Entertainment breaking into the top ten for the first time.
There is a lot of shuffling around mid-table, with titles moving up and down accordingly. There are re-entries for both You’re Dead to Me and The Infinite Monkey Cage, both of which are seasonal series, and who have seen new episodes in the quarter.
Newscast leap frogs The News Agents this quarter as the top news title. And the BBC will be pleased to have six titles in the top 25 making it the producer with the most titles (even if Goalhanger has those high positions). Fearne Cotton’s Happy Place gets into the top 25 for the first time. And while Crime Junkie drops out of the top 25 (from number 12 last quarter), Rotton Mango gets into the list in its place to ensure that there is still a true crime title.
The other titles to drop out this quarter were The Archers (from number 10 last quarter), The Therapy Crouch (from number 11) and The Overlap (from number 21).
What this continues to suggest to me is that there are three levels of podcast here:
- The really big ones – essentially the top 4
- The mid-table ones that are always going to stay in the list – roughly speaking 5-12
- The rest which could in any quarter drop out or re-appear because in truth, they’re part of perhaps another 20 lower-table titles
Obviously, there are hundreds more titles below this list, including dozens that are big in the US but don’t impact us in the same way in the UK at all (A reminder that there are precisely zero British titles in the top 50 American equivalent list).
Look for a plethora of other new podcast research in the coming days.
- Edison Research is also about to announce the first results of its Infinite Dial UK 2025 in association with SiriusXM and AdsWizz, with a presentation at The Podcast Show. Ollie Chadwick from AdsWizz and Gabriel Soto from Edison Research will be presenting on Wednesday at 12:00 on the Brand Works Stage. They’ll follow this up with a webinar on Thursday 29 May. Details are on their website.
- And Ofcom is about to publish its annual Podcast Survey and Audio Survey, with the data being released tomorrow as I type this. The release seems to be timed for The Podcast Show as well, with Ofcom actually presenting some of the results at the show in a session with their senior analyst, Mark Pearson, on Thursday at 9:30 on the Brand Works stage.
I’ll try to provide my usual comprehensive coverage once I get hold of the data. So watch out for that in the coming days.