‘Podcasts manipulate Apple’s top list by cheating with subscribers’

Podcasts have tried to influence Apple’s list of most popular podcasts in the past week by cheating on subscribers, an analyst claims. A few weeks ago, an unknown podcast suddenly reached place 1 on the top list.

Since Apple probably bases its top list on new subscribers, it appears that such podcasts are getting fake subscribers to boost their spot on the list, Chartable speculates based on its own analysis. Apple put some podcasts back a few weeks ago, but they’re already climbing the list. Below that is a podcast about real estate, which briefly took over the top position from the well-known podcast series Serial.

Chartable deduces the suspected tampering from a few elements, in the absence of transparent podcast listening figures. First, the new toppers have relatively few ratings and reviews in iTunes, while many popular podcasts have a lot of them. In addition, the new toppers also proved not very popular in other podcast apps, which sometimes show the number of subscribers.

In addition, Chartable looked at the recommendations that Apple itself makes among the top podcasts. Those are based on what else subscribers to that podcast listen to. This shows that some of the “cheating” podcasts are recommended among themselves, indicating that many subscribers follow several of the podcasts in question.

Tampering with the list can have consequences for smaller podcast makers in particular, who are less likely to reach regions where users can discover them by chance, Hot Pod claims. For large podcast makers, the consequences would be minor.