You may remember Tony Hinchcliffe as the stand-up comedian who, last fall, maligned the island of Puerto Rico in an inflammatory set during a rally in New York for the Trump presidential campaign.
Despite the criticism for those comments, Mr. Hinchcliffe landed a Netflix deal in March for three specials based on his long-running live comedy podcast, “Kill Tony.” That show is ranked modestly at No. 51 on Spotify and No. 178 on Apple Podcasts’ top charts, which track the most popular podcasts in the United States based on a combination of various factors: streams, downloads, subscribers and other mystery metrics.
Yet a new chart, released Thursday, offers new hints about Mr. Hinchcliffe’s mass appeal. For the first time, YouTube has published its ranking of top podcasts in the United States, offering a fresh perspective on a sprawling landscape.
There, “Kill Tony” is ranked No. 2, just below the reigning king of podcasts, Joe Rogan.
Another major difference from the Spotify and Apple charts: Many popular and well-established podcasts did not make YouTube’s top 100 ranking, which is based on overall watch time. Among the missing: “Call Her Daddy,” “Crime Junkie,” “SmartLess,” “The Daily” and “New Heights,” all frequently in the Top 10 of various quarterly or annual lists.
There were familiar names on YouTube’s list, including MeidasTouch, Shannon Sharpe and Theo Von in the Top 10. But when compared with the existing charts, YouTube’s version sometimes seems like a fun house mirror. While the hit podcast “Dateline NBC,” for example, was absent — it does not regularly upload episodes to YouTube — the CBS true crime newsmagazine “48 Hours” appeared at No. 4.
Despite its roots in video, YouTube has come to dominate podcasting. It is the preferred service for one-third of weekly podcast listeners in the United States, capturing more users than Spotify or Apple Podcasts, according to Edison Research. But that happened only in recent years, in conjunction with the growing popularity of video podcasts.
“They saw something other people didn’t in video,” said Brett Meiselas, a founder of MeidasTouch, comparing YouTube against the other platforms, which are now trying to attract more video creators and viewers. Mr. Meiselas, who said the chart was “a long time coming,” was pleased but not entirely surprised by his show’s No. 5 spot: “It means our work is getting out there.”
As podcasts broadly continue to rise in influence — helping to sell products, find voters and spread hot-button ideas — YouTube’s chart represents another tool for understanding who holds sway with American consumers.
It is a way to “help audiences and podcasters alike understand who is shaping that conversation,” said Brandon Feldman, the director of news, civics and podcast partnerships at YouTube. The chart can also serve as “inspiration,” or “a guide” to success for other podcasters looking to increase their audience size, he added. The ranking will be updated every Wednesday.
Mr. Hinchcliffe’s success, for example, embodies the “cultural zeitgeist,” Mr. Feldman said: “The audience is showing us what they’re looking for.” (Anti-woke comedy is Mr. Hinchcliffe’s specialty.)
The chart also comes at a time when podcast platforms are inching toward some more transparency in their metrics.
Spotify recently announced a feature that reveals how many times a podcast episode has been played. But historically, podcast platforms and producers have closely guarded their streaming and download numbers. YouTube is an exception, having published view counts long before it became a podcast destination. (It now claims to reach one billion podcast users per month.)
The big shows missing from YouTube’s chart could still join in the coming weeks. But for some podcasts, this may require a deeper investment in video — or, at the very least, ensuring their videos are correctly organized into YouTube playlists, which is critical to the ranking, Mr. Feldman said.
Charts are imperfect measuring sticks, susceptible to manipulation, lacking in transparency and calibrated more as snapshots of current popularity rather than overall popularity.
Mr. Rogan, for example, moves up and down the rankings, but no show has ever come close to drawing his total audience. (Hosts who have managed to unseat his position on the charts include Kylie Kelce, who does not appear on YouTube’s Top 100 list, and Mel Robbins, who is ranked at No. 76.)
But platforms benefit when new names rise to the top, said Melissa Kiesche, senior vice president of Edison Research, which has built its own list of podcast rankings based on surveys. “They don’t want to see Joe Rogan at No. 1 every single week forever,” she said. Discovery drives more listening hours.
Sometimes that discovery applies to household names, too. YouTube’s Top 50 included podcasts from legacy television brands such as “NBC Nightly News,” “60 Minutes” and “Late Night With Seth Meyers.”
Mr. Feldman characterized the chart, where Gen Z social media stars sit alongside cable figures who rose to prominence in the 1990s, like Nancy Grace or Tucker Carlson, as a “good testament to how those worlds can coexist and hopefully thrive together.”
