Last year, Apple updated its podcast spec for iOS 11. They added support for seasons, new episode types, and new ways to order and display episodes. Many Apple users got their first taste of these new features when iOS 11 went public in September 2017.

Apple’s changes made it possible for shows like Serial to have more control over how their stories are displayed, grouping episodes into seasons, and showing them in the proper narrative order.

Apple’s changes also formalized support for publisher-created conventions like trailers and bonus episodes:

On a technical level, Apple’s updated spec introduced four new tags:

• <itunes:type> (episodic or serial)
• <itunes:season> for season numbers
• <itunes:episode> for episode numbers
• <itunes:episodeType> (full, trailer, or bonus)

Because I’m a podcast plumbing nerd, I decided to track the adoption of Apple’s new tags over time. I watched the Apple Podcasts US Top 200 very closely for one year, monitoring the shows listed there for the presence of these new tags.

Here’s what adoption looked like for the first year:

If you ever need proof that Apple has a lot of influence over the podcast industry, just remember this chart. When Apple introduces new features, podcast publishers and hosting platforms tend to listen (the smart ones, anyway).

Most top-performing shows use the new tags

As of September 2018, most of the shows on the US Top 200 use at least one of Apple’s new tags. <itunes:type> and <itunes:episodeType> are neck-and-neck as the most popular, with nearly 75% of top shows adopting them.

The number of feeds using these tags shot up dramatically in September 2017, as iOS 11 went public, and as podcast hosting providers started to support the new tags.

Episode numbers (via <itunes:episode>) are the next most widely-adopted new tag among top podcasts, with nearly half of all shows in the Top 200 using them.

And roughly a quarter of the Top 200 shows use season numbers (via <itunes:season>). This makes intuitive sense to me, given that every show has episodes, but not all shows have seasons.

But once you get out of the Top 200, you find that…

Most shows don’t take advantage of new tags

On September 19, 2018 (exactly one year after the public release of iOS 11), I analyzed the RSS feeds of ~100,000 podcasts. This sample represents about one fifth of the 500,000+ shows Apple claims are in its directory.

Here’s what I found:

Whereas most of the shows in the Top 200 used at least one of the new tags, 58.7% of the shows in my larger sample didn’t use any of the new tags.

This is a big missed opportunity.

Serialized feeds are in the minority

Most shows I looked at don’t specify an <itunes:type>. But for those that did, there were way more episodic shows than serial shows:

What does this mean for my show?

Apple’s additions to the podcast spec give you more control over how your show appears in Apple Podcasts. You no longer have to worry that people will mistakenly listen to your serialized crime drama in the wrong order.

Apple’s new tags let you write tighter, more concise episode titles, because you don’t need to prepend episode or season numbers in the title itself. For example, instead of:

“S5E13: Dan Misener is a podcast plumbing nerd”

You can simply title your episode:

“Dan Misener is a podcast plumbing nerd”

… and leave the season and episode numbers where they belong (in <itunes:episode> and <itunes:season>).

When these tags are well-implemented, they can help give your listeners a better overall listening experience.

Yet… most of the podcast feeds I analyzed don’t use these features.

Remember: your podcast metadata is part of your show’s product packaging. It deserves care and attention. If you aren’t using Apple’s new podcast tags yet, I recommend you start. If you don’t know how to add these tags, ask your hosting provider.

And if your hosting provider doesn’t fully support Apple’s new tags more than one year after they were first introduced, I suggest you start shopping for a new host.

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