Podcasting is not so far from being twenty years old and since then it’s seen a huge surge — especially in recent years. According to our own data

Are Podcasts Getting Worse?

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2022-05-12 06:00:07

Podcasting is not so far from being twenty years old and since then it’s seen a huge surge — especially in recent years. According to our own database, more than 650,000 new podcasts were added to Apple Podcasts in 2021 alone. To put that into perspective, 400,000 podcasts were added between 2005 and 2019 [1].

Given such meteoric growth, we wanted to take a closer look at the ratings Rephonic tracks across 2.5m+ shows to see if podcasts have gotten worse.

We looked at the average rating given at six-month intervals and found that podcast satisfaction, as measured in listener ratings, peaked in 2016. Since then, the average rating has been decreasing quite steadily [2][3].

As we mentioned above, the number of new shows has exploded in recent years partly thanks to the increasing democratization of podcasting. The necessary equipment is cheaper and more accessible than ever and platforms like Anchor let anyone spin up a podcast for free in a few minutes.

We see some parallels to blogging here. Writing a blog used to be a niche activity until it took off in the early 2000s when platforms like Blogger and WordPress brought it to the masses.

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