Apple introduces new podcast categories

At the annual developers conference WWDC, Apple announced changes to its podcast directory “Apple Podcasts”. The following things are going to change about the categories:

• Three top-level categories (“Fiction”, “History” und “True Crime”) and several subcategories are going to be added.
• Several top-level categories and subcategories are going to be renamed (e.g the top-level category “Science & Medicine” will change to “Science”).
• Several subcategories are going to be discontinued (e.g. Health > Fitness & Nutrition)

We at Podigee will soon integrate these changes into our system and make them public as soon as the new categories are displayed in Apple Podcasts. Apple says “late summer”, so we expect them to roll out the changes with the release of iOS 13 and macOS Catalina in September.

Specifically, we will implement the changes as follows:

• New top-level and subcategories: You will be able to choose them in the Podigee backend as soon as they are displayed on Apple Podcasts.
• Renamed top-level and subcategories: We’ll rename them automatically. You can then check them in the backend.
• Discontinued subcategories: There’s no need to worry here, because according to Apple, podcasts with these obsolete subcategories will continue to appear in the top-level category. Once Apple has implemented the changes, you will be able to select new subcategories in the Podigee backend.

As soon as Apple has rolled out the changes and you are able to select the new categories in the backend, we will inform you again. By the way, Apple has listed all future top-level and subcategories on this website.

In addition to the category changes, Apple also introduced a new “Podcasts” app for the Mac at its developer conference, and announced that it will automatically create transcripts of podcast episodes to make them more searchable. Initially, this feature will be reserved for selected “top shows in English; more shows will be added later this year.”