Is it too late to start a podcast? What today’s numbers say

You want to start a podcast, but millions of shows already exist, and someone online says you’re too late. Here are the numbers, then how 3 well-known shows started, catch included.

Is it too late to start a podcast, or just crowded?

It’s crowded, not too late. Far fewer shows are active than the big totals suggest.

We checked these numbers on October 8, 2026. Listen Notes, a podcast search engine, last updated its figures on October 3.

In plain words:

• Listed isn’t the same as still publishing. Only about 1 in 10 shows on Podcast Index posted in the last 90 days (465,852 ÷ 4,736,753 = 0.098).
• The two totals don’t match. Listen Notes says it leaves out deleted shows, empty feeds and AI-generated audio.
• New shows keep coming, but fewer than at the peak. Listen Notes counts about 410 a day in 2026 (113,332 in 276 days). The 2025 count was about a fifth of 2020’s (210,960 ÷ 1,020,499 = 0.21).
• It’s still busier than in 2014, the year Tim Ferriss was told he was too late. More than 5 times as many shows started in 2025 as in 2014 (210,960 ÷ 40,080 = 5.3).
• A median of 27 is the middle, not the bottom. Buzzsprout counts old shows in it, not only new ones. To see where yours lands, read how many downloads is good for a new podcast.

So ask a better question: can you keep going long enough to get good?

Tim Ferriss was told it was too late in 2014

Tim Ferriss launched The Tim Ferriss Show in 2014. In a 2021 episode, he said people told him back then: “That ship has sailed. It’s too late.”

His goal was 6 episodes, to get better at interviewing. He wanted a test he’d win even if he quit, he said in 2021, because the skills and relationships would stay.

When he played back his first episode, he wrote in 2016, it sounded worse than he expected. He didn’t think the show would last a month. By the end of October 2016, the show had passed 100 million downloads, not counting YouTube.

The catch: Ferriss didn’t start from zero. He already had popular books and a blog, and he says part of the blog’s audience followed him to the podcast. Copy his 6-episode test, not his start.

Before: “I’ll post a new episode every week, forever.”

After: “I’ll make 6 episodes, one every other week. Then I’ll decide.”

The math: 6 episodes × 2 weeks = 12 weeks. That’s one season with a clear end.

The pace check: Ferriss warns, “Don’t do something for say, six episodes, that you can’t do for 500 episodes.”

Say one episode takes you 5 hours to record and edit. At one every other week, that’s 2.5 hours a week. If that already feels heavy, make the episodes shorter from the start.

The win if you stop: write down 1 skill you want from the test, such as “ask better follow-up questions”.

Aaron Mahnke almost deleted the document that became Lore

Before Lore, Aaron Mahnke wrote supernatural thrillers in the evenings, around his day job as a graphic designer. He told the story in a 2017 interview with Penguin Random House.

To help sell his novels, he planned to share tales he’d found while researching them. He started a document called “My Five Favorite New England Myths”. With only 4 myths written, it was already about 10,000 to 15,000 words. That was far too long to read as a PDF on a phone.

He was dragging the file to the trash when he thought of an audiobook instead. He recorded one myth on a microphone he already had and sent it to a friend. The friend told him to make it a podcast.

Lore came out in March 2015.

The catch: Mahnke had a pile of research from his novels, and a friend who pushed him. Not everyone starts with either.

Before: “I need a big new idea before I can start.”

After: “I already have 6 things to talk about.” Say you have 6 old blog posts, class handouts or client FAQs. Each one becomes one episode.

What to change: written text is often too dense to hear. Cut each piece to its best story or its 3 main points.

A made-up example: a 1,500-word post called “10 ways to price your photography” becomes one episode. It covers the 3 ways you use most, plus one story from your work.

What if your topic is already taken?

Jack Rhysider’s Darknet Diaries tells true stories about hacking and cybercrime. His stats page dates the first episode September 1, 2017. He launched with 4 episodes. As soon as he did, he recalled in a 2020 Timber profile, “I found four shows that were doing the same thing.”

He kept going. Timber says part of what made the show stand out was how he told the stories, not only which ones.

His stats page lists 1,257,175 audio downloads in 2018 and 27,677,785 in 2022. In 2023 they fell to 18,506,990, so growth wasn’t a straight line.

The catch: he had a head start too. Before the show, Timber says, he had a blog, 3,000 Twitter followers and a job as a network security engineer.

Found shows like yours? Listen to 1 episode from each of the top 3 in Apple Podcasts. Then write one sentence on what your show will do differently.

What you can copy from these shows

All 3 shows were still publishing as of October 2026.

• A test you win even if you stop. Ferriss aimed for skills, not downloads.
• A pace you could keep for years. Pick a format you could make 500 times, then keep the test short.
• Material you already have. Mahnke reused research from his novels.
• Your own way of telling it. Rhysider shared his topic with 4 other shows.

What we don’t know

• How many shows like these stopped. We found no data on how many similar shows quit. Judging only by the shows that lasted is called survivorship bias.
• How exact “1 in 10” is. It comes from Podcast Index alone, so treat it as a rough guide.
• A recent start from zero. We couldn’t source a show that began in 2022 or later with no audience at all. All 3 shows here had a head start.

We plan to re-check these numbers in January 2027.

What to do next

• Write down 6 episode titles today. If you can’t fill 6, use the blog-post example above.
• Record your first episode with the phone you own: how to start a podcast with just your phone.
• Once it’s out, if listeners can’t find it, check why your podcast isn’t showing up on Spotify.
• For 2 starts outside podcasting, head starts included, read how Matt Wolfe turned an AI tools spreadsheet into Future Tools and how Khan Academy started.