Apple Podcast Top Chart Scraper

A powerful Apify Actor that scrapes Apple Podcast's top charts across different categories, providing detailed information about trending podcasts, series, episodes, and subscriber content.

Features

• Scrape multiple Apple Podcast chart categories
• Extract comprehensive podcast metadata
• Get artwork URLs, descriptions, genre information
• Track release dates and episode counts
• Retrieve content ratings and URLs

Use Cases

1. Market Research & Competitive Analysis

• Track trending podcasts in your niche
• Analyze competitor performance on Apple Podcasts
• Identify emerging trends in podcast categories
• Monitor top-performing content for inspiration

2. Content Discovery & Curation

• Discover new podcasts to feature in your platform
• Build recommendation systems based on chart performance
• Create curated podcast lists for specific audiences
• Find popular episodes for content aggregation

3. Media Monitoring & Analytics

• Track podcast chart positions over time
• Monitor brand mentions in top-performing shows
• Analyze genre popularity and shifts
• Generate reports on podcast industry trends

4. Marketing & Promotion

• Identify podcast advertising opportunities
• Research influencer partnerships with popular shows
• Analyze successful podcast marketing strategies
• Track performance of podcast campaigns

5. Data Journalism & Research

• Gather data for podcast industry reports
• Analyze content trends and consumer preferences
• Study the podcast ecosystem and its evolution
• Create visualizations of podcast popularity

6. Product Development

• Build podcast discovery applications
• Create chart tracking dashboards
• Develop podcast recommendation engines
• Integrate trending content into your platform

Input Configuration

The Actor accepts a single input parameter:

category (required)

Select which Apple Podcast chart to scrape:

• Top Shows - Most popular podcast shows
• Top Subscriber Shows - Top shows among Apple Podcast subscribers
• Top Series - Trending podcast series
• Top Episodes - Most popular individual episodes
• Top Subscriber Channel - Top channels for subscribers

Input Schema

{
  "category": "top series"
}

Output Data

The Actor returns an array of podcast objects with the following fields:

Field	Type	Description
id	string	Unique Apple Podcast identifier
type	string	Content type (e.g., "podcasts")
name	string	Podcast name/title
url	string	Direct link to the podcast on Apple Podcasts
artwork_url	string	Template URL for podcast artwork (supports variable sizes)
description	string	Full podcast description
genreNames	array	List of genres the podcast belongs to
releaseDateTime	string	ISO 8601 formatted release date of latest episode
trackCount	number	Total number of available tracks/episodes
content_rating	string	Content rating (e.g., "clean", "explicit")
episode_count	number/null	Episode count (if available)

Output Example

[
  {
    "id": "1322200189",
    "type": "podcasts",
    "name": "Crime Junkie",
    "url": "https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/crime-junkie/id1322200189",
    "artwork_url": "https://is1-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/Podcasts126/v4/8c/35/04/8c350430-2fbf-98d0-0a25-00b76550ffeb/mza_13445204151221888086.jpg/{w}x{h}bb.{f}",
    "description": "Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story?...",
    "genreNames": ["True Crime", "Podcasts"],
    "releaseDateTime": "2025-11-27T08:00:00Z",
    "trackCount": 476,
    "content_rating": "clean",
    "episode_count": null
  }
]

How to Run on Apify Console

Step 1: Access the Actor

1. Log in to your Apify Console
2. Navigate to Actors in the left sidebar
3. Find and click on Apple Podcast Top Chart Scraper

Step 2: Configure Input

1. In the Actor's input screen, you'll see the Category dropdown
2. Select your desired chart category:
   • Top Shows
   • Top Subscriber Shows
   • Top Series
   • Top Episodes
   • Top Subscriber Channel
3. Alternatively, switch to JSON input mode and paste your configuration:

   {
     "category": "top series"
   }
   

Step 3: Run the Actor

1. Click the Start button at the bottom of the input form
2. The Actor will begin running and you'll see the execution progress
3. Wait for the Actor to complete (usually takes a few seconds to a minute)

Step 4: Access Results

Once completed, you can access the scraped data in multiple ways:

View in Console

• Click on the Results tab to see the data in a table format
• Use the Preview option for a quick look at the JSON output

Download Data

Click on the Export button and choose your preferred format:

• JSON - Raw JSON format
• CSV - Comma-separated values (spreadsheet-compatible)
• Excel - Microsoft Excel format
• HTML - Web page format
• XML - Extensible Markup Language

Step 5: Schedule Regular Runs (Optional)

To track chart changes over time:

1. Click on Schedule in the Actor detail page
2. Set up a recurring schedule (hourly, daily, weekly)
3. Configure notification preferences
4. Save the schedule

You can also:

• Set up integrations to push data to your database
• Configure webhooks to notify your systems when runs complete
• Use Apify's integrations with Google Drive, Dropbox, AWS S3, etc.

Tips for Best Results

1. Regular Monitoring: Schedule daily runs to track chart position changes
2. Multiple Categories: Run the Actor for different categories to get comprehensive data
3. Data Integration: Connect results to your analytics platform for deeper insights
4. Rate Limiting: The Actor respects Apple's robots.txt and implements proper rate limiting
5. Historical Tracking: Store results over time to analyze trends and patterns

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Happy Scraping! 🎧📊