State of Podcast Operations2026
An open survey of how podcast networks, studios, and agencies actually operate between recording and publish. Stack composition. Handoff failure modes. Release-day hours. Revenue patterns. Currently collecting responses across solo studios, agencies, and networks; the aggregate report releases at N=200.
Why this survey exists. Industry research consistently surveys the talent on the mic. It rarely surveys the operators behind them — the ops leads, production managers, and agency founders responsible for actually shipping each release. That gap is the gap this survey fills.
What we expect to find
Three hypotheses the survey will test. These are operator-experience priors, not aggregated data — the dataset replaces them at N≥200.
Hypothesis 1
Stack sprawl scales with show count
Our prior is that median multi-show studios run 6+ SaaS tools between recording and publish, and that the top decile runs 10+. The survey tests whether stack size correlates with show count, team size, or both.
Hypothesis 2
Release ops eats more time than editing
Anecdotally, the bottleneck at scale has moved from creation to coordination. We expect the median team to spend more hours per week on release-day operations (asset handoffs, metadata, scheduling) than on editing itself. The data will say whether that pattern is universal or only true above a certain show count.
Hypothesis 3
Notion / Airtable is the de-facto ops layer
Most multi-show studios we've talked to maintain a Notion or Airtable database as their pipeline source-of-truth. We expect this to be the majority pattern. If it isn't, what they're using instead is the more interesting finding.
What the survey measures
Six categories. Twenty questions. Six-minute median completion time. No email required to participate; respondents who want the report can opt in at the end.
- 01How many shows does your team currently produce?
- 02How many people are on your production team (full-time + contractors)?
- 03How many hours per week does your team spend on release-day operations?
- 04How many tools sit between recording and publish in your stack?
- 05What's the single most-frequently-broken handoff in your workflow?
- 06What's your annual production revenue range?
Contribute to the next dataset
Six minutes. No email required to take part. Respondents who want the full report when it ships can opt in at the end.
Take the surveyMethodology
The survey targets a sample of 200+ podcast operations leaders across three segments: solo studios (1–4 shows), agencies (5–20 shows), and networks (20+ shows). Responses are anonymized in aggregate before publication.
Most podcast research surveys creators — the talent on the mic. This survey surveys the operators behind them: the ops leads, production managers, and agency founders responsible for shipping each release. That population has been under-measured.
Get the report when it ships
The full report releases once the survey reaches 200+ responses (targeting Q3 2026). Drop your email below or take the survey to be added to the list.