Apple has “quietly tightened” its reporting of how many individuals take heed to podcasts, “sending shock waves by means of an embattled audio trade nonetheless reeling from the top of the COVID-era manufacturing bubble,” in line with a Semafor report.
The shift, Apple wrote in a weblog put up, was technical: The dominant podcasting platform had begun switching off automated downloads for customers who haven’t listened to 5 episodes of a present within the final two weeks.
Semafor says that whereas few customers seen the shift, a few of the largest podcasts on this planet noticed their official listener numbers drop dramatically. Lengthy-running reveals that publish steadily have been hit notably laborious.
One podcast community informed Semafor it had seen its downloads drop between single digits and low double digits relying on the present. One other well-known podcaster and government mentioned for some reveals, the decline in downloads was as excessive as 40%.
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