Nine new subcategories have been added to Apple Podcasts’ search tab on iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple TV to enhance podcast discoverability.
The new subcategories added include Mental Health, Relationships, Self-Improvement, Personal Journals, Entrepreneurship, Documentary, Parenting, Books, and Language Learning. The decision of which subcategories to create has been influenced by factors including the volume of new shows within those categories and engagement with existing shows that fall into them, PodPod understands.
Each of the categories will also have their own charts on Apple Podcasts, which will display the top 200 shows and top 200 episodes in the country that the person is listening to, based on listening numbers, follows, and completion rate of the podcasts.
In addition to the newly-added subcategories, Apple Podcasts has also refreshed its 19 main categories and nine subcategories within the charts to feature new artwork and recommendations, including a newly added section titled Apple Podcasts Essentials with a list of podcasts for each category curated by the tech giant’s global editorial teams.
Key categories such as Comedy, Society & Culture, Sports, and True Crime will also start to regularly showcase new collections such as New & Noteworthy shows, Shows of the Month, Featured Channels and Creators, and Global Highlights. Creators will also be able to submit a request to Apple Podcasts for their show to be featured in a corresponding category or subcategory.
Another feature that Apple Podcasts has added to make discoverability easier includes being able to filter podcast recommendations by language. Listeners can search for recommendations of the most popular podcasts in over 20 languages and select markets will also feature a ‘Podcasts in English’ section. Creators can specify the language of their podcasts via Apple Podcasts Connect or via RSS with their hosting provider.
Apple Podcasts recently introduced a number of new features for the app as part of Apple’s new iOS 17 software update. These features include supporting episode-level artwork, filtering search results by top results, shows, episodes, and channels, the ability to connect eligible app store subscriptions to top apps with Apple Podcasts, and many more.
