The number of podcasts continued to rise during the first half of the year with more than 2.8 million podcasts having been created worldwide to date according to the podcast search engine Listen Notes. But while the current pace of show launches will likely push the podcast tally beyond the three million mark by year-end, the pace of new show debuts is the slowest it has been in five years.
Listen Notes says during the first half of 2022 there were 99,467 new podcasts launched around the globe. That is an 80% decline from a year ago when a total 486,355 new podcasts debuted during the first six months of 2021.
On a month to month basis, January was the biggest month for new podcast launches so far this year. Listen Notes says 21,913 went live that month with nearly each consecutive month bringing fewer debuts. During June fewer than half the number of new podcasts – 8,747 --launched compared to January according to its database. June was also the lightest month for new show debuts stretching back several years.
Even as fewer new podcasts launch, the Listen Notes numbers also reveal that many podcasters today produce content at a more regular pace than in the past. It says more than 13 million episodes have been released so far this year, representing nearly one in ten of 137,857,843 episodes Listen Notes now counts worldwide.
Its data shows roughly one in five podcasts, or more than 600,000 shows, have been active so far this year. That is more than three times as many active shows in 2019 and nearly on par with the 724,000 active shows seen in all of 2021.
The pace of so-called “dead shows” is also slower than what it has been in the past. Listen Notes says 25,247 podcasts have died so far this year, representing less than one percent of all shows. Last year, more than 96,000 shows died during the full year. Listen Notes considers a show to have died when the RSS feed is deleted, or its iTunes “completed” tag is marked “yes” by the publisher.
The United States is where two-thirds (66%) of all podcasts originate. Not unexpectedly, most shows are in English. Listen Notes tabulates 60% were in English -- the same number as at year end. The tally shows 12% of shows were in Spanish, and seven percent were in Portuguese which is driven by the fast-growing Brazilian podcast market. Indonesian (5%) and German (3%) rounded out the top five.
The top genre remained Society & Culture during the first half. It represented 13.7% of all shows. It is followed by Education (12.5%), Arts (9.6%), Business (8.8%), Religion & Spirituality (8.4%), Comedy (7.2%), Health & Fitness (6.1%), News (5.1%), Leisure (4.9%), Music (4.8%), Sports (4.4%), TV & Film (3.1%), Technology (2.5%), Kids & Family (2.2%), and Science (2.2%).
San Francisco-based Listen Notes was launched in 2017 by Webian Fang, who in the latest update to users says Listen Notes’ search results now offer more data on how frequently a podcast releases new episodes, the average lengths of episodes, and links to Amazon Music.