New database splits 420,000 live podcasts by hosting type to surface independent shows
A new podcasts collection on NicheDB categorizes live podcast feeds into two groups: those hosted on commercial platforms and those self-hosted on a creator's own domain. Analysis of a Podcast Index bulk dump from August 2026 found 421,928 live feeds, with 93.8% concentrated across just 307 domains — anchor.fm alone accounting for nearly 98,000. The remaining roughly 13,400 domains represent the self-hosted, independent half of the medium. An early technical flaw caused the commercial source to surface only 12 shows instead of hundreds of thousands, because recent directory entries skew heavily toward independent submissions rather than reflecting the full catalogue. After a fix that walks the entire listing before switching to incremental updates, the commercial source grew from 12 items to over 30,000 across two runs, with both halves now publicly browsable at nichedb.dev.
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