What you need to know:

• Last September, Apple Podcasts rolled out a small change to its automatic downloads feature via the iOS 17 update which paused downloads when a listener had not played a show they followed in the last 15 days.
• Seemingly innocuous, the shift saw podcasts downloads globally fall drastically – analysis by analytics platform Podtrac recorded an average decline of 15 per cent year on year as of February 2024.
• In this market, that figure checks out, though some were hit harder than others.
• Amongst some of the top ranking Australian podcasts, Hamish & Andy's downloads had fallen 15 per cent as of March 2024, while Casefile was down 14.4 per cent, and in the year to January 2024 The Kyle & Jackie O Show dropped by 48.2 per cent. Only the first of the three has since made a total recovery on the download front.
• While the drop off caused initial consternation – especially as Apple didn't confirm what had happened for three weeks – local podcast execs minimised commercial impacts with strategic tweaks to offset the damage. The 26.5 per cent ad spend increase recorded by podcast in Q3, per IAB Australia, would appear to back their points.
• LiSTNR's Tothill argues the Apple saga was just another blip on the podcast industry's radar. New tech and new discovery platforms, he reckons, will be key levers for growth come 2025.

It’s been a good year for podcasts. The channel has continued to siphon an ever-growing share of spend in an otherwise tough ad market, growing 26.5 per cent to $31 million in the third quarter of 2024, by IAB Australia’s count.

But it’s not all been smooth sailing behind the scenes. Podcast networks across the globe spent much of the first half of the year grappling with falling downloads.

No one was immune. Even local chart toppers Hamish & Andy saw download numbers drop 12.2 per cent between March 2023 (2,066,766) and March 2024 (1,815,297).

An analysis of 1,000 top podcasts by analytics firm Podtrac put the industry average at a decline of 15 per cent year-on-year as of February 2024, with certain titles and genres hit harder than others. However, the true extent of the impact remains up for debate – a separate analysis by podcast adtech Podscribe saw downloads across a sample of 500 top podcast titles halved between August 2023 and July 2024.

Dead downloads 

The downward spiral was all down to the seemingly innocuous improvement to Apple Podcast’s automatic download function, quietly rolled in the iOS 17 update in September 2023. It wasn’t until three weeks later, as podcast networks began asking questions, that the company was forced to address the change in short blog post.

According to that blogpost, iOS 17 would see automatic downloads paused “when a device is out of available storage”, or “when a listener hasn’t played a show they follow (latest five episodes for more than 15 days) to preserve device storage”. Per the smartphone manufacturer, listeners could resume automatic downloads by listening to a new episode of the show or by manually changing their download preferences. But unlike prior operating systems, that change would only be applied new episodes – not all historically un-played episodes in a title’s catalogue.

Download numbers slipped gradually as iPhone owners took up the latest iOS, with adoption rates plateauing around 86 per cent in July, per Podscribe.

Now, more than a year on from Apple’s slow-motion blow, what looked on the surface like a disaster for the podcast industry has been spun into a win. With the initial pain subsided, and year-on-year growth back on the up, local podcast execs paint a picture that’s net positive – though it's likely it's taken some pain to get there.

Lemons into lemonade

“Our reaction, starting from a very local level, was very positive,” Acast's managing director for ANZ, Henrik Isaksson tells Mi3. "I know that sounds a bit contradictory, but the [automatic] downloads were not necessarily the best way forward for a listener or for an advertiser."

He says the podcast hosting and distribution platform saw “movements in inventory” from September 2023 on and started optimising towards other shows and assets across its omnichannel offering.

“We sell a lot of social and a lot of video, so it didn't necessarily have that big of an impact.”

What was difficult, per Isaksson, was the prolonged rollout: “It took months and months and months for everything to stabilise”. The uncertainty as to when the declines would bottom out made planning difficult.

Then there was the task of explaining the situation to creators who were seeing their downloads roll back and "didn't really understand what was going on".

"Some of them had declines that were more than 10 per cent and that's quite daunting for someone who makes a podcast and makes a living off of it – it is a significant decrease."

Lessons learned

At Southern Cross Austereo’s LiSTNR, executive head of audience and growth Grant Tothill says downloads were still falling as late as March 2024, yet he’s similarly upbeat about the impact.

“We worked it out pretty quickly with both of our international partners, and because we co-create so many podcasts, got a pretty good optic on what was going on,” he says. “And the truth is, once you understood it what it was, you can adjust pretty quickly.”

Like Isaksson, Tothill says the impacts to commercial outcomes were minimal, “because we work on understanding audience and audience profiling”.

“What it did was get rid of an audience that subscribed, but never listened,” he explains. While that affected reach in the short term, he says LiSTNR was able to correct those losses by pivoting their audience growth strategy.

“I actually enjoyed the moment, because it allowed us to do a deeper dive to understand what was going on with audience behaviour, and we actually learned a whole bunch we didn't know about other editorial policies and everything else, which allowed us now to actually look at growth across our major podcasts.”

More metrics

It comes back to a question of metrics – an often contentious point of debate. For Nicole Bence, chief commercial officer at Nova, the Apple downloads conundrum was a testament to the need for a multi-dimensional approach to podcast measurement.

“Like anything, you always start with quite a crude measurement, and then over time that evolves and people get more used to using a combination of metrics.”

Challenges around measurement, she says, are “part and parcel of an emerging channel”, and she credits Apple’s decision with driving “better transparency” and “accuracy” for the industry.

She says those selling against downloads might have been in pain, but for Nova’s part, the focus has increasingly been on a conversation of “significance over scale” – i.e. valuing the quality of talent’s connection to their audience over their reach.

Numbers don't lie

While networks claim to have ridden the wave, the situation brought discomfort to shows that were hardest hit.

Per Tothill, titles that had built the “foundation” of their audience through their Apple subscribers were among that group, as legacy audiences disappeared.

He gives the example of Hamish & Andy. Though the duo has, for the most part, sustained their position at the top of the charts, their numbers have only just begun to to fully recover.  

We looked at year-on-year shifts as of March 2024 – capturing the tail end of the declines while still being far enough into the year for programming to have returned to ‘business as usual’ post the summer break.

Per Triton Digital’s monthly podcast ranker, the show’s downloads fell 12.2 per cent from March 2023 (2,066,766) to March 2024 (1,815,297). It may in part be attributed the number of episodes published in each period, with five set live in March 2023 versus the same time this year – but their total listeners (made up of the number of users who download at least one episode in a given month) fell too, by 8.5 per cent from 954,669 to 853,584.

The trend stands as the months go on. At the most recent ranker in October, Hamish & Andy recorded 1,853,900 downloads and 934,394 monthly listeners.

Casefile, the true crime podcast that tends to go head to head against Hamish & Andy for first place, was much the same. The show, for which Acast last month acquired distribution rights, saw downloads fall 14.4 per cent from 2,466,502 in March 2023, to 2,112,017 in March 2024. The results are across five episodes in both cases, with total monthly listeners down by 11.4 per cent too – from 929,935 to 823,645. Per the October ranker, downloads sat at 1,802,831 on four episodes, with an audience of 771,026.

ARN’s The Kyle & Jackie O Show was one of the worst hit among those at the top end of Triton ranker. With highlights of the pair’s radio show published – sometimes thrice daily – on the iHeart Podcast Network, it's safe to imagine some subscribers might not have gotten through every episode.

In this case, we’ll look at January’s results, as the number of episodes makes for a more accurate comparison. In January 2023, the 79 episodes published by The Kyle & Jackie O Show brought in 2,133,618 downloads, and 393,255 listeners. A year later, those figures were down a respective 48.2 and 10.4 per cent, making for 1,104,877 downloads and 352,189 listeners over 71 episodes.

As of October, The Kyle & Jackie O Show’s monthly downloads had climbed some of the way back, to 1,478,828, with an audience of 470,864 listeners (up on January figures but notably less than the 512,825 listeners recorded in October 2023).

Onto the next

Tothill says its just one of many hurdles that have forced the podcast sector to evolve – and he says there’s many more on the horizon.

“To me, operating systems on smartphones are just one small part of the consideration set that we need to have as podcasters. Distribution platforms change strategy, Spotify is having a war with YouTube, YouTube is going to change their plans next year on how people consume podcasting.”

“I would have hoped, like we did, everyone just went back and said: Well, what does this mean now? How do we reset and how do we go forward again?”

Tothill points to three key levers LiSTNR is looking to for growth into the new year.

He says discovery is as important as ever – as in, ensuring listeners can find your podcast amongst the crowd.

On a similar note, Tothill puts an emphasis on evolving audience growth strategies, echoing Isaksson’s earlier remarks.

“Social media and podcasts kind of fit together now, [especially] in creating community. I think 2025 is an opportunity to understand more what's going on with particular distribution platforms. Equally, each of the social media platforms are all changing, and they're adjusting, and they have their own competitive set on what they're trying to do – algorithms change all the time.”

Figuring out how to tap those platforms to best find new audience is high on the agenda.

Lastly, he calls out the transformation happening in ad tech and targeting, and how that might help networks better monetise existing audiences, with SCA going hard on that front.

“The use of ad tech in buying podcast audiences is up about 130 per cent for us year on year. Around 70 per cent of advertisers buying are now using some form of ad tech to understand audience profiling or using it to get better value for their investment,” explains Tothill.

“Next year, as podcasts grow, I think advertisers are going to understand a little bit more that this is a great medium that can reach audiences very effectively."