News brief
Research: 39.1% of searchable podcast feeds went over a year without an episode
A Podcast Amplify study of 19,659 feeds found 39.1% of topic-searchable shows had not released an episode in over a year — 81.9% among shows that stopped at three episodes, versus 13.5% among shows past 100 episodes.
By Talker News / SWNS via Wyoming Tribune Eagle · Published · Announcement date
A Podcast Amplify study analyzing 19,659 podcast feeds found that 39.1% of 14,915 topic-searchable shows had not released an episode in over a year — compared with just 6.3% of 4,744 shows appearing in Apple genre charts. The mortality curve is steepest at the start: inactivity reached 81.9% among shows that stopped at three episodes, but only 13.5% among shows that made it past 100 episodes.
The findings reframe the industry's favorite vanity metric. Headline counts of “millions of podcasts” say little about how many shows are alive; chart presence and episode count predict survival far better than sheer catalog size. For advertisers and platforms, the implication is to weight active, consistent shows more heavily than raw feed counts.
For creators, the encouraging read is that persistence compounds: the data suggests the danger zone is the first handful of episodes, not the fiftieth. A note on sourcing: the original Podcast Amplify report was not located at verification, so this brief is based on syndicated Talker News/SWNS coverage and the announcement date is approximate from coverage metadata.
Announcement date: September 8, 2026 (approximate, per syndicated coverage)
Sources
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