Top Podcast Download Numbers?

March 21, 2006 10:00 AM

Where can I find numbers of downloads for, say, the top 100 most downloaded podcasts?
posted by davebug to Media & Arts (6 answers total)

Well, itunes serves up podcasts, althogh some people claim the ranking is easily manipulated.

Other then that, there is no way, because anyone can serve podcasts from their own server, and not share data about how many people download them.
posted by delmoi at 10:30 AM on March 21, 2006

Further to delmoi's answer, your best bet might be a site that specializes in just podcasts...Podcast Alley shows the top 10 podcasts for the month on their homepage. Of course, these are the rankings for just podcasts served by that site.
posted by bachelor#3 at 10:36 AM on March 21, 2006

The Ricky Gervais podcast claimed to be the most downloaded ever, and apparently Guiness was listing them in the record books this year.
posted by mathowie at 11:07 AM on March 21, 2006

To further clarify bachelor#3's comment, the Podcast Alley top 10 does not rank based on downloads served. The top 10 is based on votes recieved so far in the current month for that podcast so it isn't necessarily accurate.

delmoi is right in that there is no way to really know since individual podcaster serve their own content.
posted by closetgeekshow at 12:46 PM on March 21, 2006

Here's a story on the Gervais podcast being crowned king.
posted by mathowie at 12:56 PM on March 21, 2006

There is a top 100 list for folks who use Feedburner (a significant portion of podcasters) and have their "awareness API" turned on. Good place to start, with a neutral stance. I'm proud that my show is #41.

iTunes is based on something like new subscribers in the last 24 hours, rather than total subscribers or downloads.
posted by YoungAmerican at 1:37 PM on May 30, 2006