Podcast Tracker Rankings by Episode Share (October 2021)

This is an archived version, the current version is here.

Now that we have a good idea of which podcast hosts are producing new podcast episodes, let’s turn our attention to third-party podcast analytics services.

These services are typically provided by a company that is not the podcast host, but can provide tracking and analytics by being specified as the underlying media file url, which then redirects back to the host. Sometimes, these services are implemented as custom prefixes (taking the original media url and adding a prefix to it), but not always.

By intercepting every episode media file request, these analytics services can provide a view that is potentially larger than what the underlying podcast host analytics can provide.

Podtrac, one of the most popular services, released some interesting data about their US download figures for September.

But how representative of the entire podcast world is this data? How many podcasters use services like these?

We already did the work of analyzing every single new podcast episode published (about 2.0 million in October 2021), identifying which podcast hosting company it belongs to.

We used the actual media file url (past any tracking redirects) to identify the host instead of the feed url domain, which can often undercount hosts that offer custom domains.

Let’s now take a look at the tracking services themselves. Of the new episodes that were published in October, how many of them included one or more of these tracking services? Some episodes had as many as six of these redirecting trackers!

Note we can only observe “client-side” trackers. There are other podcast analytics services such as Triton Digital that receive private request logs directly from partner hosts. Like first-party podcast host analytics, the reach of these services is not measurable in a public way, and thus not included in this analysis.

Below is the ranking of podcast analytics services ordered by new episodes published during the month of October 2021.

1. Chartable

Chartable was found on 4.09% of new episodes in October.

Of these, 28.67% had one other tracker, 17.00% had 2 other trackers, 2.86% had 3 other trackers, 0.20% had 4 other trackers, and 0.01% had 5 other trackers.

34.13% also included Podtrac, 23.47% also included Podsights, 5.67% also included Podcorn, 5.14% also included Adswizz, 1.46% also included Firstory, 1.24% also included FeedBurner, 0.63% also included Blubrry, 0.23% also included Magellan AI, 0.11% also included Backtracks, and 0.01% also included Feedpress.

For episodes that used Chartable, here are the top underlying podcast hosts:

  1. Megaphone 22.91%
  2. Omny Studio 16.84%
  3. Libsyn 8.19%
  4. Spreaker 5.40%
  5. Buzzsprout 5.19%
  6. Captivate 4.36%
  7. Simplecast 4.17%
  8. Nox Solutions 4.05%
  9. Soundcloud 3.80%
  10. Podbean 3.31%

2. Podtrac

Podtrac was found on 4.05% of new episodes in October.

Of these, 27.51% had one other tracker, 17.24% had 2 other trackers, 2.90% had 3 other trackers, 0.20% had 4 other trackers, and 0.01% had 5 other trackers.

34.50% also included Chartable, 20.22% also included Podsights, 9.82% also included Adswizz, 3.45% also included FeedBurner, 1.73% also included Blubrry, 1.49% also included Podcorn, 0.15% also included Feedpress, 0.09% also included Backtracks, 0.07% also included Magellan AI, and <0.01% also included Médiamétrie.

For episodes that used Podtrac, here are the top underlying podcast hosts:

  1. Megaphone 21.43%
  2. Omny Studio 16.21%
  3. Spreaker 14.29%
  4. Soundcloud 7.86%
  5. Nox Solutions 3.86%
  6. Futuri Media 3.79%
  7. Libsyn 3.20%
  8. Simplecast 2.30%
  9. ART19 1.86%
  10. NPR 1.73%

3. Podcorn

Podcorn was found on 2.13% of new episodes in October.

Of these, 10.38% had one other tracker, 1.98% had 2 other trackers, 0.40% had 3 other trackers, and 0.02% had 4 other trackers.

10.88% also included Chartable, 2.83% also included Podtrac, 1.29% also included Podsights, 0.34% also included Blubrry, 0.18% also included FeedBurner, 0.06% also included Adswizz, 0.03% also included Backtracks, and 0.01% also included Magellan AI.

For episodes that used Podcorn, here are the top underlying podcast hosts:

  1. Buzzsprout 58.50%
  2. RSS Podcasting 9.88%
  3. Libsyn 6.57%
  4. Captivate 5.30%
  5. Podomatic 4.57%
  6. Podbean 4.25%
  7. Spreaker 2.79%
  8. Soundcloud 1.90%
  9. Transistor 1.32%
  10. Simplecast 1.13%

4. Blubrry

Blubrry was found on 2.11% of new episodes in October.

Of these, 7.70% had one other tracker, 1.07% had 2 other trackers, 0.14% had 3 other trackers, 0.12% had 4 other trackers, and 0.02% had 5 other trackers.

4.70% also included FeedBurner, 3.32% also included Podtrac, 1.21% also included Chartable, 0.80% also included Feedpress, 0.34% also included Podsights, 0.34% also included Podcorn, 0.11% also included Adswizz, and 0.01% also included Backtracks.

For episodes that used Blubrry, here are the top underlying podcast hosts:

  1. Blubrry 77.53%
  2. Amazon S3 5.33%
  3. Libsyn 2.65%
  4. Soundcloud 1.87%
  5. Internet Archive 1.60%
  6. Amazon CloudFront 1.31%
  7. Spreaker 1.28%
  8. Squarespace 1.04%
  9. Megaphone 0.98%
  10. Podtrac 0.79%

5. FeedBurner

FeedBurner was found on 1.61% of new episodes in October.

Of these, 13.51% had one other tracker, 2.19% had 2 other trackers, 0.44% had 4 other trackers, 0.24% had 3 other trackers, and 0.02% had 5 other trackers.

8.65% also included Podtrac, 6.15% also included Blubrry, 3.15% also included Chartable, 0.91% also included Adswizz, 0.83% also included Podsights, 0.53% also included Feedpress, 0.24% also included Podcorn, and 0.01% also included Backtracks.

For episodes that used FeedBurner, here are the top underlying podcast hosts:

  1. Soundcloud 6.07%
  2. Libsyn 5.08%
  3. Amazon S3 4.97%
  4. Adventist World Radio 4.62%
  5. Internet Archive 4.39%
  6. Blubrry 3.22%
  7. Spreaker 3.04%
  8. Anchor 2.41%
  9. Omny Studio 2.30%
  10. Podtrac 2.24%

6. Podsights

Podsights was found on 1.20% of new episodes in October.

Of these, 57.16% had 2 other trackers, 22.27% had one other tracker, 9.78% had 3 other trackers, 0.68% had 4 other trackers, and 0.03% had 5 other trackers.

80.29% also included Chartable, 68.42% also included Podtrac, 15.54% also included Adswizz, 2.30% also included Podcorn, 1.12% also included FeedBurner, 0.61% also included Blubrry, and 0.53% also included Magellan AI.

For episodes that used Podsights, here are the top underlying podcast hosts:

  1. Megaphone 35.28%
  2. Omny Studio 27.85%
  3. Nox Solutions 14.44%
  4. Simplecast 5.74%
  5. ART19 3.74%
  6. WNYC 2.93%
  7. Audioboom 2.45%
  8. Transistor 1.29%
  9. TWiT 1.12%
  10. Captivate 1.09%

7. Adswizz

Adswizz was found on 1.01% of new episodes in October.

Of these, 38.77% had one other tracker, 10.11% had 3 other trackers, 9.39% had 2 other trackers, 0.60% had 4 other trackers, and 0.04% had 5 other trackers.

39.23% also included Podtrac, 20.74% also included Chartable, 18.33% also included Podsights, 10.37% also included Médiamétrie, 1.45% also included FeedBurner, 0.23% also included Blubrry, and 0.12% also included Podcorn.

For episodes that used Adswizz, here are the top underlying podcast hosts:

  1. Futuri Media 27.84%
  2. Simplecast 22.44%
  3. Nox Solutions 14.76%
  4. Europe 1 10.37%
  5. BBC 7.17%
  6. NPR 6.77%
  7. StreamGuys 3.98%
  8. WNYC 2.88%
  9. Omny Studio 1.91%
  10. The Washington Post 0.41%

8. Médiamétrie

Médiamétrie was found on 0.54% of new episodes in October.

Of these, 19.33% had one other tracker.

19.31% also included Adswizz, and 0.02% also included Podtrac.

For episodes that used Médiamétrie, here are the top underlying podcast hosts:

  1. Akamai CDN 34.73%
  2. Streamakaci 22.67%
  3. Audiomeans 21.50%
  4. Europe 1 19.31%
  5. Ausha 1.48%

9. Feedpress

Feedpress was found on 0.34% of new episodes in October.

Of these, 7.91% had one other tracker, and 0.74% had 2 other trackers.

4.96% also included Blubrry, 2.49% also included FeedBurner, 1.80% also included Podtrac, and 0.13% also included Chartable.

For episodes that used Feedpress, here are the top underlying podcast hosts:

  1. Feedpress 80.03%
  2. Spreaker 5.35%
  3. Simplecast 2.97%
  4. NPR 2.58%
  5. Libsyn 2.11%
  6. Blubrry 1.80%
  7. iVoox 1.76%
  8. Anchor 0.68%
  9. Podtrac 0.56%
  10. Soundcloud 0.50%

10. Firstory

Firstory was found on 0.08% of new episodes in October.

Of these, 74.05% had one other tracker.

74.05% also included Chartable.

For episodes that used Firstory, here are the top underlying podcast hosts:

  1. SoundOn 99.26%
  2. Soundcloud 0.31%

11. Magellan AI

Magellan AI was found on 0.02% of new episodes in October.

Of these, 28.14% had 2 other trackers, and 24.52% had one other tracker.

40.30% also included Chartable, 27.08% also included Podsights, 12.37% also included Podtrac, and 1.07% also included Podcorn.

For episodes that used Magellan AI, here are the top underlying podcast hosts:

  1. Megaphone 59.70%
  2. ART19 26.44%
  3. Spreaker 10.23%
  4. Omny Studio 1.71%
  5. Podbean 1.07%
  6. Squarespace 0.85%

12. Backtracks

Backtracks was found on 0.01% of new episodes in October.

Of these, 47.30% had one other tracker, 4.73% had 2 other trackers, and 2.03% had 3 other trackers.

30.41% also included Chartable, 25.00% also included Podtrac, 4.73% also included Podcorn, 2.03% also included Blubrry, and 0.68% also included FeedBurner.

For episodes that used Backtracks, here are the top underlying podcast hosts:

  1. Anchor 32.09%
  2. StreamGuys 20.95%
  3. Castos 15.20%
  4. Spreaker 7.77%
  5. Transistor 5.07%
  6. RedCircle 2.03%
  7. Squarespace 1.69%
  8. Podbean 1.69%
  9. Buzzsprout 1.69%
  10. Captivate 1.35%

Analysis by John Spurlock

Thanks to the Podcast Index for crawling every podcast, and giving us a signal of when to check for new episodes.

And thanks to the Open Podcast Analytics Working Group for maintaining a list of media url patterns and analytics services patterns. We’ve incorporated these patterns along with some of our own to come up with the host and analytics service identification and metadata for this ranking.

Updated 2021-11-18, added Backtracks.

Updated 2021-11-14, with data for the month of October 2021.

Updated 2021-10-21: Added Adswizz and tweaked the host identification to choose the last known host in the redirect chain instead of the first, in an attempt to better capture customer-driven host migrations.

Updated 2021-10-14: Added a section about how direct server-to-server analytics integrations are not publically visible, and thus out of scope.

Updated 2021-10-13: Removed Podtrac as a host under itself, even when it is the last media file url in the redirect chain.

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