The Media Monitors Podcast Listener survey was fielded between December 13th and 31st, 2021. Participants aged 18+ were screened on whether they had listened to a podcast in the last 7 days, then asked to list the podcast titles. Participants were encouraged to consult their podcast app of choice during the survey. These unassisted responses were then individually matched back to unique RSS feeds which were polled to collect information about genre and publisher.
Top Publishers from Top 200 Podcasts
The iHeartPodcast Network kept its number 1 spot in our ranker to close out 2021. Stuff You Should Know landed at #8 overall while The Breakfast Club moved to #17. Drink Champs (#27), Drama Queens (#28) also ended up within the top 30 while Chiquis and Chill (#128) made the top 200 in its debut quarter.
NPR bounced back into the #2 slot this quarter, though Up First (#37) and NPR News Now (#31) slipped a bit in their quarter over quarter positions. New from NPR this quarter is Believed (#165) though the podcast published its last episode in 2018.
Spotify’s podcasts from their subsidiary podcast studios (Parcast and Gimlet) alongside branded Spotify Exclusives not published via RSS moved their total to 9 shows, good enough for third in our ranker. The group of shows, led as always by The Joe Rogan Experience (#1) has been growing, with a number of other podcasts reportedly in the works.
As we mentioned last quarter, independent podcasts using Patreon to distribute premium versions and/or give listeners a way to support the show, tallied 13 in the Top 200. Independent shows (no mentions of Patreon on their websites/podcast descriptions) counted for another 30 of the Top 200.
Top 25 Podcasts from Q4 2021
The Joe Rogan Experience (#1) seems to be locked in as the #1 podcast in our survey every quarter, and the show is back in the headlines as artists have begun requesting Spotify remove their music to avoid association with the podcast. Whether this helps or hurts his position will be interesting to watch.
The only newcomer to the Top 25 this month is Mile Higher (#21) from Audioboom’s Creator Network. The podcast is part of the True Crime genre and posts videos of their recording to YouTube where they have almost 400,000 subscribers at the time of publication.
Top 10 Categories from Top 200 Podcasts
| Category | # of Pods | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Comedy | 44 |
| 2 | Society & Culture | 41 |
| 3 | True Crime | 36 |
| 4 | News | 25 |
| 5 | Sports | 14 |
| 6 | TV & Film | 9 |
| 7 | History | 8 |
| 8 | Music | 7 |
| 9 | Arts | 6 |
| 9 | Business | 6 |
| 9 | Fiction | 6 |
Comedy is still the most popular genre of podcast, and this quarter True Crime made its biggest jump yet, from 24 podcasts in Q3 to 36 in Q4.
Notable True Crime podcasts from Q4 in our Top 200: Dark History (#10) and Murder, Mystery & Makeup (#41) both from Audioboom and hosted by Bailey Sarian a “professional makeup artist and true crime aficionado” who got her start on YouTube with the series Murder, Mystery and Makeup. American Radical (#53) from MSNBC, Killer Instinct (#125) from Studio71 and Murder in Illinois (#189) from the iHeartPodcast Network.
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