Earlier this year, Spotify began to publicly reveal the follower numbers for podcasts on its platform, once again confirming Joe Rogan’s status as the king of podcasting.
But just how large are the biggest shows? And what do they have in common?
Rephonic is a podcast database that now provides Spotify follower (subscriber) numbers as well as estimated listener numbers and other metrics for three million shows. We investigated the Spotify data to find some answers [1].
TL;DR:
- The Joe Rogan Experience has 3x more followers than the next biggest show on Spotify
- The fastest-growing show on Spotify is Brazilian
- Three-quarters of the top 100 podcasts are in English
- Comedy is the most common category within the top 25
📈 Joe Rogan has almost 3x more Spotify followers than the next biggest show
The Joe Rogan Experience is the most followed show on Spotify, with an impressive 15.2m followers at the time of writing. The next most popular show, TED Talks Daily, has 5.2m followers - almost three times fewer!
🇧🇷 The fastest-growing podcast on Spotify is Brazilian
We looked at the fastest-growing podcasts over the past 30 days, but only included those that started with at least 100k followers, to avoid overly skewing towards brand new shows that are beginning from a small base [2].
In first place is the Portuguese show É Nóia Minha?, which has grown by 45%, from 273k to 396k followers. As far as we can tell the title roughly translates to “Is it just me?” or “Am I crazy?” and explores common anxieties like imposter syndrome and perfectionism.
Smosh Reads Reddit Stories is the second fastest-growing podcast, increasing from 147k to 197k Spotify followers (34%) over the last 30 days. Its first episode was released in November 2022, nearly two decades after the collective began uploading videos to YouTube in 2006. Over the years, they’ve grown a massive social media following, including 10 million followers on Facebook alone. This large, dedicated fanbase is likely driving the rapid growth of their podcast.
Tucker Carlson, a political commentator and talk show host who has recently seen a significant rise in fame, notably makes it into the top five with an increase from 350k to 432k followers (23%).
Meanwhile, The Rest is Football, a British podcast, grew from 215k to 250k followers (16%) probably due to the excitement surrounding the Euros which took place in June and July of this year.
🗣️ Over three-quarters of the top 100 shows on Spotify are in English
We then analyzed the languages of the one hundred most followed podcasts on Spotify. We found that 76% are in English, with Spanish being the second most common language.
English-language podcasts are significantly overrepresented in the top 100, considering our previous research showed that English podcasts constitute 58% of all podcasts globally.
It’s interesting to see Portuguese and Indonesian pretty well represented. Spotify is reported to be the most popular audio streaming app in Indonesia and Brazil, with the Brazilian market experiencing the fastest growth out of any market in Spotify’s history.
🎭 Comedy is the most common category amongst the top 25 shows
Next, we looked at podcast categories. We found that Comedy is the most common category among the most followed shows on Spotify. This contrasts the overall podcast landscape, where Society & Culture dominates according to our previous research.
📅 Top 25 shows are more likely to release episodes twice per week
We then looked at the publishing frequency of the most followed podcasts and found that they’re most likely to publish new episodes twice per week or daily [3].
So it looks like a frequent publishing schedule pays off.
👥 Audiences of top shows are slightly more male
As for the audience gender, it’s a pretty even split amongst the top shows. However, they’re ever-so-slightly more likely to skew Very male than Very female [4].
🇺🇸 Most listeners of top podcasts on Spotify are based in the United States
We then looked at the primary audience location of the top 25 and 100 shows. Unsurprisingly, the United States came first in both cases. Interestingly, Mexico is overrepresented in the top 25 compared to the 100 most-followed podcasts.
Rephonic estimates the most common country of each podcast's audience by analyzing public data sources.
Final thoughts
It’s no surprise that The Joe Rogan Experience takes the crown for the most-followed podcast on Spotify, but what’s striking is just how far ahead he is compared to other podcasts.
Another interesting finding is that the fastest-growing podcast on the platform is the Brazilian show É Nóia Minha?. Initially, this might seem unexpected, but considering that Spotify’s fastest-growing market is Brazil and Portuguese is the third most common language among the top 100 podcasts, it starts to seem less surprising after all.
Looking to get booked on podcasts? Try Rephonic for free and access listener numbers, Spotify followers, contact info and lots more for over three million shows.
Footnotes
[1] For simplicity, when we mention the “top 25” or “top 100” podcasts, we are referring to those with the most Spotify followers.
[2] We pull Spotify follower numbers for each podcast at approximately 30-day intervals distributed throughout the month. To calculate the growth rates, we compared the most recent figure with the one from 30 days prior. However, for Stick to Football and Panda Show, the most recent data points we had were 60 days apart, rather than the typical 30 days.
[3] We put podcasts into buckets based on their average episode frequency. For example, some podcasts in the 'weekly' bucket will publish new episodes slightly more frequently than every 7 days on average, and some will publish slightly less frequently.
[4] Rephonic estimates the gender skew of a podcast audience by analyzing the names of listeners to guess their gender. Our data is therefore not 100% accurate but rather a best guess. We believe the error to be low when taken in aggregate.
