Apple seemingly inflates Podcasts app rating with new review prompt

AppleInsider

Ratings for Apple's Podcasts app have jumped from an abysmal 1.8 stars to 4.6 stars in just over a month with what appears to be a little coaxing from Apple.

In September, Apple opened its first-party apps to public ratings and reviews on the App Store. The move, in conjunction with what seems to be clever prompting, has helped the tech giant inflate the score of its bemoaned Podcasts app.

Earlier this week, developer Kosta Eleftheriou noted that Apple Podcasts now boasts a 4.6-star score with over 18,000 ratings, a substantial increase from the 1.8 stars earned from about 1,000 ratings in early October.

As Eleftheriou points out, many newly submitted reviews -- a bulk of which are positive -- are for podcast content, not the Podcasts app. A little digging by The Verge reveals the behavior might be the result of a new in-app prompt.

"With iOS 15.1 released last month, Apple Podcasts began prompting listeners to leave a rating and review just like most third-party apps -- using the standard Rating & Review prompt available to all developers," an Apple spokesperson told the publication.

It is unclear when and where the prompt is displayed, but judging by user responses referencing individual podcasts, its placement is causing confusion. Further, users are submitting thousands of reviews a day. This, of course, presents a problem for anyone seeking legitimate feedback on the Podcasts app, not the content that it hosts.

The issue does not seem impact other podcast apps, suggesting the new prompt is at fault.

Apple Podcasts has been beset by troubles since its revamp in April. The new version has spawned a litany of complaints from both podcast creators and podcast consumers who report persistent bugs that mar the user experience.

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heli0s

It’s a 3 star app at best, if we have to be objective. 1.8 was too low and 4.6 is too high. 

welshdog

I don't listen to podcasts at all, but my wife does and she has recently grown to loathe the Apple Podcast app. She is experiencing all the things it has been criticized for. Additionally, I have noticed that Apple Music seems to have lost the ability to remember what I last played. If I listen in the car to anything - from my library or Apple - the next place I connect it starts playing random stuff including things from my wife's iPhone. This is new behavior that probably started with iOS 15. Even just getting back in the car without connecting to any other devices plays random stuff.

I find it incomprehensible that a company like Apple would take so long to fix bugs and failures that are giving them a lot of bad press. This stupid trick they have come up with to fluff their app ratings is just sad.

crowley

Haha, that's a sneaky trick if deliberate.  If not, it's still funny.

foregoneconclusion

LOL...all this means is that ratings can be inflated regardless of 1st or 3rd party origin. Prompting users for ratings is nothing new. 

Beats

This whole app idea is embarrassing. Put it back in the Music app and throw it away.

StrangeDays

Beats said:

This whole app idea is embarrassing. Put it back in the Music app and throw it away.

What? No…that would be throwing the baby out with the bath water. Podcasts should be it’s own app, and Music should its own app.

mr lizard

heli0s said:

It’s a 3 star app at best, if we have to be objective. 1.8 was too low and 4.6 is too high. 

If we have to be objective, 1.8 is what the public collectively awarded it. 

mr lizard

Beats said:

This whole app idea is embarrassing. Put it back in the Music app and throw it away.

Put it back in the Music app? Since when was Podcasts last part of the Music app on iOS? 

Besides, that music app is crowded enough. It’s fast becoming iOS’s answer to iTunes. 

bart123ric

I stopped using the Apple podcast app about a year ago in favor of the Castro app.  

I listen to a lot of history podcasts, meaning I need to listen to the episodes in the order they were released. Maybe it was just me, but the biggest gripe I had with the app was that I could not get the app to do that automatically.  I'd be driving in the car, an episode would finish and another would start, but it would not be the correct episode (in release order). 

I did not like the UI.  It's been a while so I can't remember specifics, but I remember having a hard time searching and finding what I wanted. 

The best thing about Castro is that it lets me queue up a series of episodes ahead of time -- so I can be sure to listen in the release order. I can also mix the list up with episodes from other podcasts.  Castro is a nice little app.

Ofer

Apple’s podcast app is an embarrassment! Considering Apple was the company that popularized podcasts and are champions of products and software that “just work”, I don’t see how they were able to get the user experience on this app so wrong. It’s TERRIBLE. I want to accurately sync my podcasts between my iPhone and my MacBook. NOPE. I want to be able to sort podcasts chronologically, from newest to oldest, but play them in release order (oldest to newest). NOPE. I could go on and on. No wonder Spotify is surpassing them in podcast subscriptions. I still use the app because I don’t want to support a company like Spotify that doesn’t appropriately reward the artists that make it what it is. But if they did, I’d jump ship in an instant.

firelock

I manage an app for the company I work for. When I took over the app it had been around about 4 years and only had about 30 ratings, with the average in the low threes. I oversaw a major overhaul of the app that launched in 2018 and I hoped that the improvements would cause users (roughly 20K active users/month) to leave more reviews (hopefully positive). Instead we only got a handful of new reviews. Then in 2019 I had our vendor add a review prompt. Within 24 hours we had hundreds of reviews. In a few months we had over 5,000. Average star rating was 4.7.

There is nothing shady about adding a review prompt. When I did it, I had no idea if it would 1) work, or 2) increase or decrease the rating. In fact I was taking a gamble because those thousands of new reviews could have been negative. And unless we are accusing Apple of doing something shady behind the scenes, they were also taking a gamble and in this case won.

EsquireCats

I understand where people are coming from with this - but you know what this actually looks like? 
It looks like a vocal minority had down rated the app, and now that more people are being prompted to rate it, the rating is now a fairer reflection of the widespread user sentiment.

This doesn’t mean people suddenly believe the app is good or better, or that apple are evil or had planned this - it means that ratings continue to represent the average, and that in-app prompts are a fairer way of obtaining that wide spread view. If the only way to rate this app previously was to return to the app store then it is no surprise whatsoever that only angry users went to this effort. 

crowley

Ofer said:

Apple’s podcast app is an embarrassment! Considering Apple was the company that popularized podcasts and are champions of products and software that “just work”, I don’t see how they were able to get the user experience on this app so wrong. It’s TERRIBLE. I want to accurately sync my podcasts between my iPhone and my MacBook. NOPE. I want to be able to sort podcasts chronologically, from newest to oldest, but play them in release order (oldest to newest). NOPE. I could go on and on. No wonder Spotify is surpassing them in podcast subscriptions. I still use the app because I don’t want to support a company like Spotify that doesn’t appropriately reward the artists that make it what it is. But if they did, I’d jump ship in an instant.

There are other podcast player apps besides Spotify, that aren't trying to buy the sector, and most of them are better than Apple Podcasts.  My preference is Overcast.  It uses the Apple podcast directory as its backend, and gives you a better UI.