Apple and Spotify have revealed their best podcasts of 2023. Here’s what they do and don’t tell us.

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It’s that time of year again, when all your friends share Spotify Wrapped and you (read: me) respond with a boring Apple Music Replay and no one cares. I also have Spotify, but my Wrapped file won’t load, probably because it crashed due to overuse. I received advice from Famous author Olivia Wolfgang Smith If Taylor Swift is your number one artist on Spotify, “they’ll show you a little video of her saying thank you for being simple.”

But it’s not just about the music! Our year-end streaming reports also give us a glimpse into people’s podcast consumption habits. Let’s get into it.

The best podcasts on Spotify and Apple are…

Spotify and Apple have released their top podcast lists, and they have many (though not all) of the usual suspects. Although it gives us a valuable idea of ​​which shows are performing well, it is not conclusive. Apple and Spotify have different audiences and different strategies, and their respective rankings are a reflection of these differences.

1. Crime addict
2. newspaper
3. Dateline NBC
4. Smartless
5. This is American life
6. obsessed
7. arrives first
8. Huberman Laboratory
9. Hidden brain
10. Things you should know

Spotify’s top 10 list includes:

1. The Joe Rogan Experience
2. Call her father
3. Huberman Laboratory
4. Anything goes for Emma Chamberlain
5. On purpose with Jay Shetty
6. Crime addict
7. Last weekend with Theo Vaughn
8. serial killer
9. Diary of a CEO with Stephen Bartlett
10. Daily TED Talks

As you can see, there is surprisingly little overlap between the two lists. Just Crime addict And Huberman Laboratory It appears on both. And while Apple has plenty of true crime, news, and older podcasts, Spotify’s roster is stronger in celebrity chat shows (especially its own).

according to Study conducted by Cumulus and Signal HillApple’s podcast listeners tend to be older than Spotify listeners (the average age of listeners is 41 versus 37, respectively). Although Spotify is evenly split by gender, 61% of Apple Podcast users are female. Additionally, longtime podcast listeners prefer Apple over Spotify.

You can see how these demographics show up in the results. True Crime is largely driven by female listeners, which contributes to the high rating of Crime addict, Dateline NBCAnd obsessed On Apple. Podcast supporters like This is American life And Things you should know It also performed well on Apple, likely because the app’s users have been consuming podcasts for a while.

On Spotify, she sees her young audience playing. Alex Cooper, Emma Chamberlain and Theo Von took top spots. It’s not the place you go to listen to NPR — not only are there no NPR shows in the top 10, there are only two (short arrives first And NPR News Now) currently in Spotify top 100. For better or worse, he’s talking about Spotify’s new podcast strategy that relies heavily on celebrity chatbots.

You also see in Spotify’s listing a bias towards their own content. Four of the top ten shows are Spotify originals. This is a little less egregious than last year when the year-end list consisted of just five shows, four of which were for Spotify. But even then, this was somewhat explained by the fact that because Spotify’s offerings were exclusive to the platform, the streams of those podcasts were concentrated in one place. That changed this year, with Spotify stepping back from the exclusivity model and expanding several of its podcasts, including the top 10 Anything goes And serial killer. It is possible that factors such as in-platform marketing of those shows and residual listener habits may have played a role in raising the profile of those shows.

There’s still no list that can say with any certainty the exact ranking of all podcasts across all platforms, but I’ve found Edison’s quarterly study (which is based on polling, rather than raw download data) to be the most consistent. in it Third quarter reportEdison confirmed that Rogan was number one, and reinforced Apple’s data Crime addict On number two. but Anything goes Recorded at No. 45, the serial killer It did not make the top 50 list. Despite the arrival of conservative talk groups such as Ben Shapiro Show And The Dan Bongino Shownone of them appeared on either list (although Cumulus Podcast Network, which distributes both, was on Apple’s list Top ten free channels). However, that listening may happen on YouTube or on the Daily Wire’s own app, which ranks 11th in the App Store’s news category.

This doesn’t mean that Spotify or Apple’s rankings are wrong. But because of the specifics of these lists, it’s best to look at them as a snapshot of their respective platforms, rather than the industry as a whole.

Are there any shows you’re surprised by the absence? Or something you can’t believe Is it really that popular? Follow me at [email protected].

That’s all for today! I’ll be back on Tuesday with the latest audio news.