How Many Podcasts Are There? (New 2024 Data)
The podcast space continues to grow each year.
The multi-billion dollar industry has millions of individual podcasts. And several million listeners.
We’ll take a look at the statistics associated with podcasting, specifically delving into how many podcasts currently exist.
Contents
- Number Of Podcasts (Top 5 Picks)
- How Many Podcasts Are There?
- Podcasting’s Growth Over Time
- Podcasts Vs Other Media
- Podcast Episode Statistics
- Podcasts By Language
- Podcasts By Region
- Podcasts By Genre
Number of Podcasts (Top 5 Picks)
- There are around 3 million active podcasts
- Podcasts outnumber audiobooks by around 6:1
- The number of podcasts grew year-over-year between 2009 and 2020
- Almost 30 million podcast episodes were published last year
- Podcasts are available in more than 100 languages
How Many Podcasts Are There?
As of February 2024, there are currently 3.2 million podcasts.
That said, exact figures can vary significantly depending on several factors, most notably the inclusion of inactive podcasts.
Podcast Index, for example, estimates the figure to be closer to 4.1 million.
Source: Listen Notes, Podcast Index
Podcasting’s Growth Over Time
The number of new podcasts has increased year-over-year for the best part of the last decade.
Somewhat predictably, like many forms of media, the pandemic bumped up the numbers in 2020. However, the number of new podcasts has seen a recent drop.
Here’s a breakdown of new podcasts per year since 2019:
| Year | Number of New Podcasts | Change Over Previous Year | Change Over Previous Year (Percentage) |
| 2009 | 20,764 | - | - |
| 2010 | 23,187 | + 2,423 | ↑ 11.67% |
| 2011 | 26,719 | + 3,532 | ↑ 15.23% |
| 2012 | 30,486 | + 3,767 | ↑ 14.1% |
| 2013 | 34,758 | + 4,272 | ↑ 14.01% |
| 2014 | 40,323 | + 5,565 | ↑ 16.01% |
| 2015 | 57,846 | + 17,523 | ↑ 43.46% |
| 2016 | 91,234 | + 33,388 | ↑ 57.72% |
| 2017 | 133,797 | + 42,563 | ↑ 46.65% |
| 2018 | 203,847 | + 70,050 | ↑ 52.36% |
| 2019 | 336,991 | + 133,144 | ↑ 65.32% |
| 2020 | 1,018,817 | + 681,826 | ↑ 202.33% |
| 2021 | 740,635 | - 278,182 | ↓ 28.78% |
| 2022 | 245,741 | - 494,894 | ↓ 66.82% |
| 2023 | 220,786 | - 24,955 | ↓ 10.16% |
Similarly, podcast episodes per year are seeing notably rapid growth:
| Year | Number of New Podcasts | Change Over Previous Year | Change Over Previous Year (Percentage) |
| 2009 | 1,059,047 | - | - |
| 2010 | 977,625 | - 81,422 | ↓ 7.69% |
| 2011 | 1,202,279 | + 224,654 | ↑ 22.98% |
| 2012 | 1,539,315 | + 337,036 | ↑ 28.03% |
| 2013 | 1,999,080 | + 459,765 | ↑ 29.87% |
| 2014 | 2,681,813 | + 682,733 | ↑ 34.15% |
| 2015 | 3,881,121 | + 1,199,308 | ↑ 44.72% |
| 2016 | 6,601,750 | + 2,720,629 | ↑ 70.1% |
| 2017 | 12,266,632 | + 5,664,882 | ↑ 85.81% |
| 2018 | 14,725,992 | + 2,459,360 | ↑ 20.05% |
| 2019 | 18,061,471 | + 3,335,479 | ↑ 22.65% |
| 2020 | 29,996,333 | + 11,934,862 | ↑ 66.08% |
| 2021 | 29,313,782 | - 682,551 | ↓ 2.28% |
| 2022 | 21,294,832* | - 8,018,950* | ↓ 27.36%* |
*Partial data
Source: Listen Notes
Podcasts vs Other Media
Although podcasting has taken off in recent years, it still lags behind more traditional forms of media.
There are almost 3x more movies on IMDb. And around 22x more songs on Spotify.
However, podcasts outnumber audiobooks on Audible by over 6x.
Here’s how podcasts compare to other popular forms of media:
| Type of Media | Number |
| Songs (Spotify) | 70 million |
| Movies (IMDb) | 8.3 million |
| Podcasts | 3.28 million |
| Audiobooks (Audible) | 0.47 million |
Source: Listen Notes
Podcast Episode Statistics
There are around 150 million podcast episodes, averaging 50 episodes per podcast.
Half of all podcast episodes are downloaded less than 29 times in the first week after publishing.
Spotify and Apple Podcasts are the biggest players in the podcast game.
Spotify claims to have 4.7 million podcasts on its platform. While Apple has 2.5 million as of January 2023.
According to Podcast Index, there are an estimated 4,101,163 podcast episodes.
Here’s their breakdown of how often shows are being published:
| Time Period | Number of Published Podcast Shows |
| Last 3 Days | 82,756 |
| Last 10 Days | 230,183 |
| Last 30 Days | 330,553 |
| Last 60 Days |
395,975
|
| Last 90 Days |
448,929
|
Sources: PodNews, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Podcast Index
Podcasts by Language
Podcasts are becoming more and more diverse. And are available in over 100 different languages.
Yet English podcasts (60.38%) still dominate the space.
Here’s a look at podcast language distribution:
| Rank | Language | Number | Proportion |
| 1 | English | 1,786,269 | 60.38% |
| 2 | Spanish | 346,990 | 11.73% |
| 3 | Portuguese | 205,381 | 6.94% |
| 4 | Indonesian | 141,771 | 4.79% |
| 5 | German | 78,904 | 2.67% |
| 6 | French | 59,961 | 2.03% |
| 7 | Chinese | 50,239 | 1.7% |
| 8 | Italian | 29,735 | 1.01% |
| 9 | Japanese | 29,208 | 0.99% |
| 10 | Hindi | 26,708 | 0.9% |
| 11 | Russian | 24,899 | 0.84% |
| 12 | Dutch | 19,891 | 0.67% |
| 13 | Swedish | 14,679 | 0.5% |
| 14 | Arabic | 12,570 | 0.43% |
| 15 | Turkish | 11,272 | 0.38% |
| 16 | Polish | 10,245 | 0.35% |
| 17 | Danish | 9,815 | 0.33% |
| 18 | Norwegian | 8,613 | 0.29% |
| 19 | Farsi | 7,749 | 0.26% |
| 20 | Tamil | 6,799 | 0.23% |
| - | Others | 76,934 | 2.6% |
Source: Podcast Insights
Podcasts by Region
Despite a wide range of podcasting regions, podcasts based in the US make up the majority of the space (66.05%).
Here’s a closer look at podcast distribution by region:
| Rank | Country | Number | Proportion |
| 1 | US | 1,896,056 | 66.05% |
| 2 | Brazil | 195,269 | 6.8% |
| 3 | Indonesia | 141,801 | 4.94% |
| 4 | Germany | 75,679 | 2.64% |
| 5 | France | 54,756 | 1.91% |
| 6 | UK | 47,395 | 1.65% |
| 7 | Spain | 44,706 | 1.56% |
| 8 | India | 32,158 | 1.12% |
| 9 | Italy | 29,692 | 1.03% |
| 10 | Japan | 29,299 | 1.02% |
| 11 | Mexico | 28,347 | 0.99% |
| 12 | China | 26,252 | 0.92% |
| 13 | Russia | 24,861 | 0.87% |
| 14 | Taiwan | 23,116 | 0.81% |
| 15 | Netherlands | 18,386 | 0.64% |
| 16 | Canada | 16,710 | 0.58% |
| 17 | Australia | 16,263 | 0.57% |
| 18 | Sweden | 14,502 | 0.51% |
| 19 | Turkey | 11,290 | 0.39% |
| 20 | Poland | 10,252 | 0.36% |
| - | Others | 133,719 | 4.66% |
Source: Podcast Insights
Podcasts by Genre
Podcast genres are more evenly distributed than languages and regions with a whole variety of topics covered.
Together, society & culture (13.75%) and education (12.49%) make up over one quarter (26.24%) of all podcasts.
Here’s a look at podcast distribution by genre:
| Rank | Genre | Number | Proportion |
| 1 | Society & Culture | 496,379 | 13.75% |
| 2 | Education | 450,952 | 12.49% |
| 3 | Arts | 341,773 | 9.47% |
| 4 | Business | 321,385 | 8.91% |
| 5 | Religion & Spirituality | 302,390 | 8.38% |
| 6 | Comedy | 258,608 | 7.17% |
| 7 | Health & Fitness | 222,440 | 6.16% |
| 8 | News | 186,414 | 5.17% |
| 9 | Leisure | 178,136 | 4.94% |
| 10 | Music | 171,361 | 4.75% |
| 11 | Sports | 159,462 | 4.42% |
| 12 | TV & Film | 112,913 | 3.13% |
| 13 | Technology | 89,594 | 2.48% |
| 14 | Kids & Family | 78,206 | 2.17% |
| 15 | Science | 77,316 | 2.14% |
| - | Others | 161,881 | 4.49% |
Source: Podcast Insights
Conclusion
The growth of the podcast industry has naturally brought an increase in the number of available podcasts.
A pandemic-related 2020 spike boosted the podcasting space, but the upward pre-pandemic trajectory has persisted.
And the number of podcasts is likely to continue its growth in the near future.
For more podcast data, take a look at 9 Podcast Trends to Follow.
