Goalhanger holds 44 Apple chart slots, more than iHeartMedia and Spotify together

We fetched Apple's top-100 chart in 18 storefronts on 2026-09-06 and took the publisher string Apple prints next to each show. That is 1,800 slots: 100 ranks in each of us, gb, ca, au, de, fr, es, it, nl, se, br, mx, jp, in, ie, nz, pl and kr. We then rolled the 1,056 distinct publisher strings up to a parent company by hand, one row per string, each mapped row carrying an ownership URL. A string we could not verify against a public record keeps itself as its parent, so it is counted but never merged into a larger company.

The publisher string is written by the publisher, not by Apple, so a show made by one company and published under another's studio name counts to the name on the feed. Distribution and ad-sales deals are invisible here: a network that sells a show without appearing in its publisher string holds no slot in these tables.

We expected the big US audio companies to sit at the top. They do not. iHeartMedia holds 19 of the 1,800 slots and Spotify 15. The company in second place behind the BBC is Goalhanger, a British producer with 11 shows on these charts, holding 44 slots. That was the surprise, and the rest of this report is us checking it.

Key findings

1. Goalhanger holds 44 of the 1,800 Apple top-100 slots across 18 storefronts, more than iHeartMedia's 19 and Spotify's 15 added together, which come to
2. Source: Podcastquery, September 2026.
3. The BBC holds 59 of the 1,800 slots with 24 shows in 14 storefronts, the largest single parent in the file.
4. Goalhanger reaches its 44 slots with 11 shows in 11 storefronts. The Rest Is History alone charts in 10 storefronts and is number 1 in Great Britain and New Zealand.
5. Amazon holds 4 of the 1,800 slots with 3 shows, and 0 of the 100 US slots. Audacy holds 0 slots under the first-named rule.
6. In the US top 100, the six US audio majors (iHeartMedia, Spotify, SiriusXM, Audacy, Cumulus Media, Amazon) hold 8 of the 100 slots between them. NPR holds 5 and Audiochuck 4.
7. In the US top 100, 89 distinct publisher strings and 82 parents fill the 100 slots, 71 of those parents hold exactly one slot, and it takes 32 parents to cover 50 of the 100 slots.
8. In the UK top 100, Goalhanger holds 11 slots and the BBC 11. No other parent reaches 5.
9. Across all 1,800 slots, 29 parents hold 450, 149 hold 900, 559 hold 1,350, and 820 of the 1,009 parents hold exactly one slot.
10. 15 of the 1,479 charting shows appear in 6 or more storefronts. 1,342 of them appear in exactly one.

The BBC holds 59 slots and Goalhanger 44, ahead of every US company in the file

The BBC holds 59 of the 1,800 slots and Goalhanger 44. iHeartMedia holds 19 and Spotify 15, so the two of them together hold 34, which is 10 slots short of Goalhanger. The New York Times Company holds 14.

Six of the parents charting in one storefront only are national broadcasters in their home market: TBS Radio in Japan with 28 slots, Radio France with 22, PRISA in Spain with 20, NPO in the Netherlands with 16, ARD in Germany with 15 and Sveriges Radio in Sweden with 13. A national broadcaster puts many separate shows on one chart, and that is where the counts come from. TBS Radio's 28 slots come from 28 different shows.

Goalhanger's 44 slots come from 11 shows spread across 11 storefronts, and the BBC's 59 from 24 shows across 14. Two entries are a single show: DOAC holds 11 slots with The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett, and Mel Robbins holds 11 with The Mel Robbins Podcast, each charting in 11 storefronts.

Goalhanger's 44 slots come from 11 shows, and The Rest Is History charts in 10 storefronts

All 11 shows chart in Great Britain, which is why Goalhanger holds 11 of the 100 UK slots. The Rest Is History is number 1 in Great Britain and New Zealand, 2 in Ireland, 4 in Australia, 7 in Canada and 15 in the United States, and it is the only Goalhanger show in the US top 100. Nine of the 11 shows chart in New Zealand, eight in Ireland and seven in Australia. Two chart in Canada, The Rest Is History at 7 and The Rest Is Politics: US at 90, and one in the United States. Two chart in India, Empire: World History at 10 and The Rest Is History at 36. One show reaches each of Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Sweden: The Rest Is Politics in Germany, and The Rest Is History in the other three.

iHeartMedia holds 19 slots with 6 shows, Spotify 15 with 8, and Amazon 4 with 3

iHeartMedia's 19 slots come from six shows. Love Trapped (iHeartPodcasts and Glass Podcasts) charts in six storefronts: au, ca, gb, ie, nz, us. Stuff You Should Know charts in five: au, ca, in, nz, us. Betrayal Weekly charts in four, The Psychology of your 20s in two, and Burden of Guilt and The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart in one each, both in Canada.

Spotify's 15 slots come from eight shows, and only two of them chart widely. Good Hang with Amy Poehler and The Bill Simmons Podcast, both published as The Ringer, each chart in au, ca, nz and us. The Louis Theroux Podcast (Spotify Studios) charts in gb and ie. The other five hold one slot each: Caso 63, Fausto and Teorías de Conspiración in Mexico, Hobbylos and Kaulitz Hills in Germany.

The New York Times Company holds 14 slots with five shows. The Daily charts in nine storefronts (au, br, ca, ie, in, kr, mx, nz, us), one of the six shows in the file that chart in nine or more. Pablo Torre Finds Out, from The Athletic, charts in ca and us. Hard Fork charts in Canada, and two Athletic football shows chart in Great Britain.

Amazon holds 4 of the 1,800 slots with three shows: British Scandal (Audible) in gb and nz, Escándalo Mexicano (Wondery) in mx, and La Corneta Extendida (Amazon Music) in mx. None of them is in the US top 100.

The tables above give every slot to the first company named in the publisher string. Counting instead every slot whose string names the company anywhere raises iHeartMedia from 19 to 24, Spotify from 15 to 19, SiriusXM from 5 to 10 and Audacy from 0 to 4. The extra iHeartMedia slots come from strings like "Cool Zone Media and iHeartPodcasts" and "Exactly Right and iHeartPodcasts"; the extra Spotify slots from "Keep It Light Media / Spotify Studios" and "The Wall Street Journal & Spotify Studios"; the extra SiriusXM slots from "Freakonomics Radio + Stitcher"; and all four Audacy slots from one string, "The HISTORY Channel | Back Pocket Studios | Audacy". On the looser reading iHeartMedia and Spotify hold 43 slots together, still under Goalhanger's 44. Goalhanger's and the BBC's counts do not change between the two readings. On that looser reading the margin is one slot, 44 against 43, and the charts are one day, so another fetch day could put the two the other way round.

82 parents fill the 100 US slots, and the six US audio majors hold 8 of them

The US chart holds 100 slots filled by 89 distinct publisher strings and 82 parents. The largest, NPR, holds 5 slots with five shows: Planet Money, Fresh Air, NPR News Now, Up First from NPR and Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!. Audiochuck holds 4: Crime Junkie, Park Predators, The Truth About Natalie and The Deck.

Counting first-named publishers, iHeartMedia holds 3 US slots, Spotify 2, SiriusXM 2, Cumulus Media 1, Audacy 0 and Amazon 0. That is 8 of the 100 US slots for the six companies together. On the looser "named anywhere" reading the same six hold 11 of the 100.

Goalhanger holds 11 UK slots and the BBC 11, and no other parent reaches 5

The UK chart holds 100 slots filled by 68 strings and 62 parents, more concentrated than the US chart on both counts. The BBC reaches its 11 UK slots with 11 shows. Goalhanger reaches its 11 with 11 shows too, every show it has on any chart in the file. 47 of the 62 UK parents hold exactly one slot.

820 of the 1,009 parents hold exactly one slot, and 149 parents hold 900 of the 1,800

The 1,800 slots sit under 1,056 distinct publisher strings and 1,009 parents after the map. 29 parents hold 450 of the 1,800 slots, 149 hold 900, and 559 hold 1,350. 820 parents hold exactly one slot.

It takes 7 parents to cover half of the Japanese chart and 8 each for the French and Spanish ones. In the United States it takes 32, in Mexico and India 38 each, and in Poland 40. Goalhanger is the top parent in two storefronts, gb with 11 slots and nz with 9, and the BBC in two, in with 6 and kr with 8. The charts page lists all 18.

15 shows chart in 6 or more storefronts, and 1,342 chart in exactly one

The BBC's Global News Podcast charts in 12 of the 18 storefronts, the widest in the file. Of the 15 shows here, 8 carry a publisher string that is a person or the show itself rather than a company: DOAC, Mel Robbins, Joe Rogan, Chris Williamson, Casefile Presents, All-In Podcast, LLC, Perfect Strangers and Pod Save America. Only one of the 15 belongs to a US audio major, Love Trapped under iHeartMedia.

Below that, 10 shows chart in 5 storefronts, 19 in 4, 23 in 3 and 70 in 2. The remaining 1,342 of the 1,479 shows chart in exactly one. See also the largest podcast networks list.

The funnel: 18 files, 1,800 slots, 1,479 shows, 1,056 publisher strings

No slot was dropped. The join to the Podcast Index dump matters only for the host and category columns in slots.csv: 97 slots, covering 92 shows, carry a blank host and category and stay in every count here. A slot fails to join when the show is not in the dump, or entered the index after the dump date of 2026-08-16, three weeks before we fetched the charts. Every number above is computed over all 1,800 slots and does not depend on the join.

Method

The charts were fetched on 2026-09-06 from Apple's top-100 "Top Shows" feed for 18 storefronts, each file returning HTTP 200 with 100 results. A slot is one of the 100 ranks in one storefront, so a show charting in six storefronts holds six slots.

The parent map lives in data/chart_publisher_parents.csv in the Podcastquery repository, with columns artistName, parent, evidence_url, co_production and slots. It covers every string holding 2 or more slots plus every string naming a company discussed here, and its result is the parent column in the published slots.csv. A mapped row that merges a string into a larger owner carries an evidence_url, a Wikipedia article or the company's own page showing the ownership. 111 of the 242 mapped strings carry no such URL. 109 of those 111 keep themselves as their parent, so a company whose string we could not verify is undercounted. The other two are co-production strings whose slots went to the first producer named in the string: "Historiska Media | Acast" to Historiska Media and "Simone Pieranni - Chora Media" to Chora Media. No number in this report depends on either.

The co-production rule gives a slot to one company only, the first named in the string. World War II with Tom Hanks is published as "The HISTORY Channel | Back Pocket Studios | Audacy" and holds 4 slots (us 81, gb 65, ca 17, ie 66). All four go to A+E Global Media as the owner of the first named company, and Audacy gets none. That is the reading every table above uses. The alternative, giving a slot to every company named anywhere in the string, is reported once above with its own numbers.

A slot count between 1 and 4 prints "<5" in the tables, in the Slots, US slots and UK slots columns. The Shows and Storefronts columns print the exact number, because a show count or a storefront count says nothing about how many chart slots a company holds. The last row of the US and UK tables is a group of parents, not one company, so it prints its one slot. The CSVs carry every raw count, and the exact slot counts for the companies named in the text are in the text.

As a sanity check, Wikipedia says Goalhanger runs "its 15 main shows" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goalhanger, read 2026-09-15). We find 11 Goalhanger shows holding at least one of the 1,800 slots, fewer than the 15 the company says it runs, and a show can run without reaching a top 100.

Limits. The publisher string is self-declared. Distribution and ad-sales deals are invisible, so a network that sells a show without appearing in its publisher string holds no slot here. The charts are one day, 2026-09-06, and nothing here is a trend. Slots are not downloads, listeners or revenue, and Apple does not publish what its ranking measures. A storefront is Apple's store, not a country of origin, so a US show charting in Ireland counts in the ie row. The string "CBS" in these charts is Korea's Christian Broadcasting System, not CBS News. Podcast Index supplies the host and category columns only. The full method is on /method.

Data

Every row behind these tables is published in these six files:

• slots.csv, 1,800 rows, one per slot: cc, rank, itunesId, show, artistName, parent, co_production, joined_to_dump, host, category1.
• parents.csv, 1,009 rows, one per parent: slots, shows, storefronts, us_slots, gb_slots.
• storefront_publishers.csv, 18 rows, one per storefront: slots, distinct_strings, distinct_parents, top_parent, top_parent_slots, parents_for_half, joined_to_dump.
• goalhanger_shows.csv, 11 rows, one per Goalhanger show, with its rank in each of the 18 storefronts.
• README.md names every column and denominator.
• METHOD.md holds the parent map rule, the co-production rule and the limits.

Data: CC BY 4.0, Podcastquery, September 2026. Next to any number here, cite: Source: Podcastquery, September 2026.