How Many of the 706,000 Podcasts are Still in Production?

Last August (read: not that long ago), I posted a blog exploring how many of the 540,000 podcasts in existence at the time were still in production. Fast forward to now and the number of podcasts has ticked up to 706,000 according to Blubrry who tracks these sorts of things.

Back in August of last year, the rate of new podcast titles being added was approximately 2,000 per week. Mercifully, the rate of podcast entries has slowed now to about 3,000 new podcast titles a month (not episodes) according to Blubrry’s CEO Todd Cochrane.

It’s one thing to start a podcast, and quite another to develop and sustain engaging content time after time. So I asked Cochrane how many of the 706,000 podcast series have ceased production, or “podfaded.” The numbers are sobering.

Only 18% of podcasts added an episode in three months

Of all of the podcasts tracked by Blubrry, just under 280,000 of the 706,000 have produced a new episode in the one-year period of April 2018, to April 2019. That means only 39% of all podcasts were in production in the past year. Or to look at it through a different lens, more podcasts (60%) are out of production than in.

Todd drilled down further to the last three months — February, March and April — and during that period, only 126,000 of all existing podcasts added an episode. That means only 18% of all podcasts added an episode in the last three months of the…