August podcasting downloads up, in first ranking since switch to total listeners
Hamish and Andy remain Australia’s top podcast, after this month’s Triton Podcast Ranker switched to listener numbers, rather than downloads.
Moving forward, the monthly ranking metrics will show both monthly listeners and downloads, but month-on-month ranking changes were not reported for August, given the change in ranking metric.
Monthly downloads in Australia were up for the month of August, jumping from 47.8 million to 49 million, as Victoria joined NSW in spending the entire month in lockdown.
Top 20 podcasts for August [click to enlarge]
The rankings system also shows that in particular, radio catch-ups have taken a big hit in the new format, with less frequent, yet popular podcasts coming out more favourably.
This is exemplified by The Kyle & Jackie O Show on ARN/iHeartMedia, which was ranked third last month, however dropped down to seventh this month. It has 290,541 unique listeners, but with 121 episodes being released over the course of the month, in comparison to Casefile True Crime, one spot above it last month, which had five episodes. This means that while it maintained high downloads, its unique listener count was far lower.
Podcast downloads by month [click to enlarge]
Also in the top five was ARN/iHeartMedia’s Life Uncut with Brittany Hockley and Laura Byrne at third, which benefitted from the ranking change, with 516,958 listeners. Fourth was Nova’s The Update with 477,336 listeners and Schwartz Media’s 7am had 352,358. The top five is also the same in the All-Australian rankings.
The top publisher of the month was ARN/iHeartMedia with 3.45 million total listeners, as LiSTNR (SCA) closely followed with 3.01 million. The change did not have a large impact on the publisher rankings however, Sports Entertainment Network (SEN) dropped to the bottom of the list, despite having a significant growth in downloads in August.
Podcast downloads by publisher
Participating publishers in the Australian Ranker include Audioboom, ARN/iHeartMedia, DM Podcasts, Equity Mates Media, Hidden Brain Media, Kinderling Kids Radio, LiSTNR (SCA), News Corp Australia, Nine, NOVA Entertainment, Podshape, Schwartz Media, Sports Entertainment Network (SEN), Stitcher Media, TOFOP Productions, Wavelength Creative and West Australian Newspapers.
