There are probably millions of podcasts out there right now, you can check out ours right here, and every day thousands fold and thousands more spring forth. It has never been easier to broadcast yourself, but only a select few can claim to be the world’s top podcasts.
Among the more popular places that people go to listen is Spotify, which has been focusing on podcasts as a medium in recent years, and seems to be the go-to place for celebrities to spin up their personal shows. The most recent big name to jump on the Spotify train is Trevor Noah, whose “What Now?” interview series sees the former Daily Show host and his famous friends pushed to the top in Spotify’s rankings.
But who is the top podcaster in the world? Most people might say Joe Rogan. Rogan famously signed a multi-year deal to host his podcast exclusively on the platform for $200 million in 2020. At the time it was the biggest podcast deal ever. Just how many listeners does The Joe Rogan Experience have now, four years later?
It turns out that there exists a way to find out. According to Bloomberg’s Ashley Carman, Spotify quietly rolled out a feature last month that shows how popular certain podcasts are. The feature is currently unlabeled but can be found on the Spotify app, and lists the listeners for a podcast.
With this feature, we can see the world’s most listened-to podcasts on the platform in terms of how many people follow the podcast host.
The biggest podcast in the world: here are the top 10 according to Spotify
- 1 – The Joe Rogan Experience (14.5 million followers),
- 2 – TED Talks Daily (5 million followers),
- 3 – Call Her Daddy (3.7 million followers),
- 4 – Crime Junkie (3.3 million followers),
- 5 – Stuff You Should Know (3.2 million followers)
- 6 – Anything Goes with Emma Chamberlain (3.1 million followers),
- 7 – Huberman Lab (3 million followers),
- 8 – The Daily (2.6 million followers),
- 9 – On Purpose with Jay Shetty (2.3 million followers),
- 10 – Serial Killers (2.2 million followers).
Rogan claims the top spot on Spotify, and the gap between number one and two is nearly 10 million followers. And now with The Joe Rogan Experience no longer exclusive on the platform and available through the likes of Apple, Amazon and YouTube it is likely to remain the top podcast in the world for the foreseeable future.
However, according to Spotify, the number of followers we can glean from the new features doesn’t necessarily represent the total audience or listeners, even though it does give some insight.
“This number represents the number of users who have decided to ‘follow’ a show on Spotify — it doesn’t represent a show’s total audience or the performance of an episode,” Spotify said about the feature. So even though Noah’s podcast doesn’t appear in the top 10 most followed list, it could already be seeing listener numbers that would rub its shoulders with others in the list.
Right now, however, follower count is the best metric to gauge just how far-reaching certain podcasts are, and far and away Rogan clearly has the biggest podcast in the world.
