In an extraordinary display of obsessive data collecting, The Podglomerate has released the most impressive (and fun) statistical roundup we’ve seen lately.
It is Spotify’s Top Followed Podcasts / March 2024. Hosted on Google Sheets, the spreadsheet tabulates the follower count across 758 podcasts. Each show is represented by title, show host, network, genre, and description.
Tucked at the bottom is this overall follower count: 191,623,000. Of course those aren’t unique followers, and many listeners follow multiple shows.
While the public sheet cannot accept changes, it does allow sorting by column. This terrific feature opens the door to seeing the long and short tails of comedy shows, or education podcasts, or fiction productions, or any of the other standard classifications.
Here are a few results of our test column sorting.
- The Joe Rogan Experience leads the Spotify follower count by nearly 3x the second-placed show, TED Talks Daily. (Rogan: 14.5M / TED: 5M)
- In the Business category, The Diary OF A CEO with Steven Bartlett leads with 1.7M followers.
- Among Comedy shows, The Joe Rogan Experience wins again, thanks to the unfortunate categorization which puts many straight-ahead interview shows in the Apple Comedy category (self-selected by the podcasters). That phenomenon pushed Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend to seventh position.
- Health & Fitness? Huberman Lab.
- History? Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History.
- News? The Daily.
Sort the sheet by Networks, and you learn how each network’s shows stack up with followers. With NPR, for example, we see that Up First has the network lead in followers with 932,000, beating TED Radio Hour (752,000) and that 14 NPR shows made the overall cut of The Podglomerate’s list.
This metrics playground is publically available HERE.
