The start of a new year typically brings an uptick in the number of new podcast debuts, and that has again held true this year. The number of new shows reached its highest level in more than six months during January. The podcast search engine Listen Notes reports 14,085 launched last month worldwide, the highest number since last May, when 15,362 debuts were logged. The total remains under the debut total from last January, however, when 21,405 podcast premieres were recorded around the globe.
January’s totals are a rebound from the typically slow December as many creators opt to hold off on releases until after the holiday season. Listen Notes says there were 9,944 debuts during December 2024.
Listen Notes says two-thirds (65%) of all podcasts originate in the US, with 61% of the shows produced in English. Spanish ranks a distant second, representing 11% of podcasts. And Society & Culture remains the top genre worldwide, with 14% of shows falling into the category.
Listen Notes says podcasters got out of the 2025 gate with more than 2.1 million episodes released last month. That helped push the total number of episodes released to date to 170.5 million, based on its analysis.
But the number of podcasts that creators compete with is in reality much smaller. Listen Notes says about one in ten shows are active so far this year, as it pegs the number of active podcasts at just under 322,000. The new year is still only weeks old, but as a comparison, Listen Notes says there were 598,081 active podcasts last year. That was more than double the number of active shows in 2023, which most consider a positive sign about the continued health of the industry.
While it is still early, some shows have already thrown in the towel. Listen Notes says 1,532 shows around the globe have already “died” this year. Listen Notes considers a show to have died when the RSS feed is deleted, or its iTunes “Completed” tag is marked “yes” by the publisher.
The pace of show debuts has slowed in recent years. Listen Notes says 2024 had the fewest podcasts launched last year since 2017, with only about a fifth as many shows debuting during 2024 as during the pandemic-fueled peak year of 2020. During all of last year, it says 184,603 new podcasts dropped an inaugural episode, which was a 21% decline from 2023.
Overall, Listen Notes says there are at least 3,492,329 podcasts in the world. The podcast search engine and database says it relies on automated scripts and human moderators to clean its data and make needed adjustments to account for podcasts that were long ago deleted, are low quality feeds such as with no episodes or just a test clip, AI-generated audio, and non-audio RSS fees containing only PDFs.
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