Podtrac continues to track podcast traffic trends with our weekly podcast updates (which you can subscribe to here) and again this month with this monthly traffic summary for context.
Last month we noted that 2021 traffic trends have been just slightly above or on par with 2020 traffic through May, and June was the first month where 2021 saw less traffic than 2020. Upon investigating the June decrease, the lower download numbers for June were attributed to an iOS 14.6 bug released on May 24th and reported by Apple on their Apple Podcasts for Creators page on July 1, 2021. Apple reported this bug corrected with the release of iOS 14.7 on July 19th in this July 29th update.
Podtrac client data shows a continued downward trend in Apple Podcast downloads during July which was not seen to the same extent with other clients .(see below graph). According to Podtrac data, it takes about 30 days for a new version of Apple iOS to replace a prior version, so we expect the effects of the Apple download bug to be mostly resolved by the last week of August.
This decreased Apple Podcast traffic continued to contribute to lower year-over-year download numbers for the month of July. Downloads from Apple Podcasts, which Apple’s June bug affects, are down 31% from May to July across all Podtrac measured podcasts.
Another thread we are following is decreased News category listening after the heightened listening during the pandemic and 2020 election cycle. The below chart shows relatively less downloads in the News category after January 2021 as compared to 2020. Beginning in June 2021, some of the decrease is likely related to the Apple bug.
August data should give us a clearer indication of the direction of overall podcast traffic trends and we’ll be keeping a close eye and reporting back what we find.