True crime is 0.5% of active podcasts and 7% of Apple's charts. Religion is 14% and 1.5%

We took the first Apple category of every feed in the Podcast Index dump dated 2026-08-16, 4,711,475 rows, and set it against the first category of the 1,387 shows we could join from Apple's top-100 "Top Shows" charts in 18 storefronts, fetched 2026-09-06. Both sides are keyed the same way, on the first word of the category, which is how the dump stores a two-part name and how the /categories pages key it.

The denominator on the feed side is the 437,693 feeds whose newest episode is dated on or after the day 90 days before 2026-08-16. There is no upper bound on that window, so a feed carrying an episode dated after 2026-08-16 counts as active too. Most feeds the index holds stopped publishing years ago and cannot appear on a chart. The all-feeds share is in the table and in the CSV as well, and every sentence below names which denominator it is using.

We expected true crime to be over-represented, because the genre is what trade coverage talks about. What we did not expect was the size of the category on the feed side: True Crime is the first category of 0.52% of active feeds, and no other top-level category has fewer active feeds. Religion & Spirituality is the largest active category of the 19, with 60,118 active feeds, 13.74%, and it holds 21 of the 1,387 chart shows, 1.51%.

Categories are self-declared. A feed writes its own Apple category into its XML, and a show picks where it wants to compete, so a true crime show filed under Society & Culture counts as society on both sides here.

Key findings

1. True Crime is the first category of 2,266 of the 437,693 feeds active in the 90 days to 2026-08-16, 0.52%, and of 99 of the 1,387 joined chart shows, 7.14%. Its chart share is 13.79 times its active share. Source: Podcastquery, September 2026.
2. Religion & Spirituality is the first category of 60,118 active feeds, 13.74%, the largest of the 19 top-level categories, and of 21 chart shows, 1.51%. Its chart share is 0.11 times its active share.
3. Comedy holds 197 chart shows and Religion & Spirituality holds 21, on 14,263 active feeds against 60,118.
4. News is the largest category on the charts with 257 of the 1,387 shows, 18.53%, on 6.64% of active feeds. Society & Culture follows with 244 shows, 17.59%, on 12.80%.
5. Business is the second largest active category at 13.02% of active feeds and holds 7.21% of chart shows.
6. Counting every top-level category a feed lists in its ten category slots, true crime is 5,066 of 620,903 active assignments, 0.82%, and 172 of 2,080 chart assignments, 8.27%, a ratio of 10.13. Religion reads 0.12 on the same measure.
7. 131 of the 1,800 chart slots hold a show whose first category is True Crime. Those slots are 99 distinct shows, and 17 of the 18 storefronts carry at least one. Japan carries none. Poland and Canada carry 14 each.
8. Nine of the 97 shows that joined from the United States chart carry True Crime first, and Audiochuck publishes 3 of those 9: Crime Junkie, Park Predators and The Deck.
9. Apple's own genre label marks 159 of the 1,800 slots True Crime, 8.83%, against the 131 of 1,703 joined slots, 7.69%, that carry true crime as their first category in the dump.

Ranked by ratio, the table runs from True Crime at 13.79 to Religion & Spirituality at 0.11

True Crime has 17,401 feeds in the dump, 0.37% of 4,711,475, and 2,266 of them published in the 90 days to 2026-08-16, 0.52% of the 437,693 active feeds. On the charts it holds 99 of the 1,387 joined shows, 7.14%. Divide the chart share by the active share and the row reads 13.79, the highest of the 19.

Each feed counts once, under its first category. The feeds column is a share of 4,711,475, active of 437,693 and chart shows of 1,387.

The "(none)" row is a feed with an empty first category, 286,319 of them. The "(other)" row is a feed whose first category is a subcategory rather than one of the 19 top-level names: games with 9,239 feeds, politics with 251, christianity with 236, pets with 196, and 75 further values, 11,666 feeds in total. Every dump row sits in exactly one of the 21 rows, so the unrounded % all shares sum to 100; the column above is rounded to two decimals and does not. Government holds under 5 chart shows, so its chart cell prints "<5" and its shares print n/a.

Nine of the 97 joined US shows carry True Crime first and Audiochuck publishes 3 of them

97 of the 100 United States slots joined to a dump row. Nine of those shows carry True Crime as their first category, in this chart order, with Apple's publisher string as Apple prints it.

Audiochuck holds 3 of those 9 slots with Crime Junkie at 1, Park Predators at 84 and The Deck at 94, and 8 slots across all 18 storefronts: Crime Junkie in Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand and the United States, Park Predators in Canada and the United States, The Deck in the United States. ABC News holds 2 of the 9 US slots, with 20/20 and What Happened to the McStays?.

Across all 131 true crime slots, ABC News holds 10, Audiochuck 8, iHeartPodcasts and Glass Podcasts 6 for Love Trapped alone in six storefronts, RedHanded 5, Ballen Studios 4, Exactly Right and iHeartPodcasts 4, CBC 3 and OnePodcast 3. Every other publisher holds 2 slots or fewer. The publisher is Apple's own artistName string and we did not roll it up: one show reads "iHeartPodcasts and Glass Podcasts" and another reads "iHeartPodcasts | Glass Podcasts", and we left both as they came.

True crime takes 131 of 1,800 chart slots and 17 of the 18 storefronts carry at least one

The storefront bases run from 74 to 100 joined shows. Only India reaches the 100 we require before we publish a share, and India's true crime count is masked anyway, so this table gives counts beside their base for all 18 and the text quotes counts.

Poland and Canada carry 14 true crime shows each, the most of the 18, and Japan carries none. The United States chart carries 9, fewer than Poland, Canada, Italy, Australia, Sweden and New Zealand. A storefront is Apple's store and not a show's country of origin, so a US show charting in Ireland counts in the Irish row.

Religion & Spirituality holds 1.51% of chart shows on 13.74% of active feeds, and twelve categories hold a smaller chart share than active share

Religion & Spirituality runs the other way from true crime. It has 396,148 feeds, 8.41% of 4,711,475, and 60,118 active feeds, 13.74%, the largest active share of the 19 top-level categories. It holds 21 chart shows, 1.51%, and the same division gives 0.11.

Seven categories hold a larger share of the charts than of active feeds: True Crime 7.14% against 0.52%, Comedy 14.20% against 3.26%, History 6.20% against 1.72%, News 18.53% against 6.64%, Fiction 2.38% against 1.65%, Society & Culture 17.59% against 12.80% and Science 2.09% against 1.65%.

Twelve hold a smaller one: Religion & Spirituality 1.51% against 13.74%, Music 0.65% against 4.13%, Leisure 0.87% against 3.82%, Arts 2.60% against 6.26%, Health & Fitness 3.39% against 6.87%, Business 7.21% against 13.02%, TV & Film 1.66% against 2.92%, Kids & Family 1.30% against 1.94%, Technology 1.59% against 2.27%, Sports 4.33% against 5.81%, Education 6.49% against 8.64%, and Government, whose chart count is under 5 and therefore masked, on 0.71% of active feeds.

Two of the under-side rows carry the most feeds of any category. Business has 57,004 active feeds and 100 chart shows. Religion & Spirituality has 60,118 active feeds and 21 chart shows. Comedy has 14,263 active feeds and 197 chart shows.

Counting every category a feed lists, true crime reads 10.13 and religion 0.12

A feed can list up to ten categories. The table above uses only the first one, which is the choice a show makes about where it competes. Recounting so that a feed counts once for each top-level category it lists anywhere gives 620,903 assignments over active feeds and 2,080 over the 1,387 chart shows. Shares here are shares of assignments, not of feeds.

27,770 feeds list true crime somewhere, 5,066 of them active, and true crime takes 172 of the 2,080 chart assignments, 8.27%. Religion is listed by 445,798 feeds, 68,760 of them active, and takes 27 chart assignments, 1.30%. Counting the later slots raises true crime's active share from 0.52% to 0.82% and its chart share from 7.14% to 8.27%, so the ratio falls from 13.79 to 10.13. Religion reads 0.11 on the first category and 0.12 here.

Castos still prints 25% for Society & Culture from 2020 and our count is 17.59%

castos.com/podcast-statistics/, read 2026-09-15, prints: "In Apple's Top 200 Chart, 25% of the listed podcasts are within the Society and Culture category." The page attributes it to Pacific Content, 2020 (https://castos.com/podcast-statistics/).

Our count is 244 of the 1,387 joined chart shows, 17.59%. Their 25% counts one Apple top 200 in 2020. Our 17.59% counts 18 storefront top-100 charts fetched 2026-09-06 and joined to the 2026-08-16 dump.

Apple's own genre label marks 159 of 1,800 slots True Crime against our 131 of 1,703

Apple prints a genre on each chart entry, which is an independent read on the same 1,800 slots. Apple labels 159 of them True Crime, 8.83% of 1,800. Our count is 131 slots whose dump category1 is true crime, 7.69% of the 1,703 joined slots. The Italian storefront spells the label "True crime" on 18 slots and the other eight spell it "True Crime", so we compared case insensitively.

We compared the true crime line because True Crime is a top-level category with no subcategories, so Apple's label and the dump's first category name the same thing. On the 818 joined slots where Apple's label is a top-level English category name, Apple and the dump agree on 749, 91.56%. The rest cannot be rolled up, because Apple's label is often a subcategory (Personal Journals, Documentary, Daily News) and is localised per storefront (Noticias, Comedia).

Against the live Podcast Index counter, read 2026-09-15, feedCountTotal is 4,728,565 against our 4,711,475, a gap of 17,090 feeds, 0.36%, and feedsWithNewEpisodes90days is 472,076 against our 437,693, a gap of 34,383, 7.28% (https://stats.podcastindex.org/daily_counts.json). Our dump is dated 2026-08-16 and its 90 day window ends there, while the live page counts up to the day we read it, so we expect both of our numbers to sit lower.

The join keeps 1,387 of 1,479 chart ids, 93.78%

No dump row was dropped. We lost 92 chart ids at the join. Apple lists those shows, and the dump either has no feed for them or holds the feed without the itunesId Apple uses. The charts were fetched three weeks after the dump was cut, so a show whose feed reached the index in those three weeks had nothing to match. Of the 1,387 joined shows, 1,386 carry a first category and 1 does not, which is why the "(none)" chart cell prints "<5".

Method

Categories are keyed on the first word of the name, the same 19 keys tools/export_lists.py uses, because the dump stores "Society & Culture" as category1 "society" with category2 "culture". The site's /categories pages use those keys, so the numbers here and there agree.

The chart side is Apple's "Top Shows" top-100 for us, gb, ca, au, de, fr, es, it, nl, se, br, mx, jp, in, ie, nz, pl and kr, fetched 2026-09-06 from rss.applemarketingtools.com, HTTP 200 and 100 results for every storefront. The 1,800 slots hold 1,479 distinct itunesIds, because a show charting in several storefronts is one id, and we de-duplicated on that id before counting shows. Every chart share is a share of the 1,387 that joined, not of the 1,479 ids and not of the 1,800 slots.

Active means the feed's newestItemPubdate is dated on or after the day 90 days before 2026-08-16, the dump's date, with no upper bound on the window. Feeds with no newest-episode date are never active but stay in every denominator. Ratio is a category's share of chart shows divided by its share of active feeds, divided at full precision and rounded once. Cells under 5 print "<5" and a masked share prints n/a; a share whose base is under 100 also prints n/a, which is why the storefront table above gives counts and why category_by_storefront.csv prints n/a in the share column for all 17 storefronts whose joined base is under 100.

The limits: categories are self-declared and no one checked them, and the any-category table is our check on that. The charts are one day, 2026-09-06, so a different day moves individual shows and nothing here describes a trend. Chart shows are not audience, because a slot is a place on Apple's list and Apple does not publish what the ranking measures.

Data

Every row behind the tables is at /static/data/true-crime-is-half-a-percent-of-podcasts-and-7-percent-of-apple-charts/:

• category_shares.csv, one row per category plus the "(none)" and "(other)" rows, with the first-category block and the same six columns measured over category1 to category10 under an any_ prefix.
• chart_shows_by_category.csv, the 1,387 joined chart shows with itunesId, show, artistName, category1, storefront count, storefronts and best rank.
• true_crime_chart_shows.csv, one row per true crime chart slot with storefront, rank, show, artistName and the feed's hosting domain.
• category_by_storefront.csv, storefront by category with the chart show count, the share and the storefront's joined base.
• README.md, every column and denominator.
• METHOD.md, the keying, the join, the definitions and the limits.

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