Apple Podcasts + Listen Notes Scraper

Scrape Apple Podcasts and Listen Notes — the two most comprehensive global podcast directories — through one combined actor with a single platform switch.

• Apple Podcasts uses the public iTunes Search API. No login, no API key, no proxy required.
• Listen Notes uses its official REST API. Free tier (250 calls/month) requires only an API key.

What you get

Apple Podcasts surface

• Search podcasts by free-text query, country store, and genre.
• Lookup by podcast ID (numeric Apple collectionId) — batch up to 100 IDs per call.
• Top podcasts charts — RSS feeds covering 47 countries and 19 genres, refreshed live by Apple.

Fields: podcastId, title, publisher, publisherId, url, feedUrl, publisherUrl, primaryGenre, genres[], artworkUrl (600x600), country, currency, episodeCount, releaseDate, explicitness, advisoryRating, summary, copyright.

Listen Notes surface

• Search podcasts / episodes / curated lists by query, with language / region / genre filters.
• Best podcasts by genre — Listen Notes' editorial top picks for any genre.
• Genres index — list every Listen Notes genre with parent / child relationships.
• Trending typeahead — discover currently popular shows.
• Podcast / episode detail by ID — full metadata.

Fields: podcastId, title, publisher, description, url, feedUrl, websiteUrl, artworkUrl, language, country, genreIds[], episodeCount, listenScore, listenScoreGlobalRank, latestPubDate, earliestPubDate, updateFrequencyHours, social{twitter, facebook, instagram, youtube, ...}, itunesId, explicitContent, isClaimed. Episodes additionally carry audioUrl, audioLengthSec, embedded podcast{} reference.

Modes

Mode	Apple	Listen Notes	Description
searchPodcasts	✓	✓	Free-text search for podcasts
lookupById	✓	—	Apple lookup by collectionId (batched 100/call)
topPodcasts	✓	—	Apple top RSS chart by country + genre
searchEpisodes	—	✓	Listen Notes episode search
searchCurated	—	✓	Listen Notes curated-list search
podcastById	—	✓	Listen Notes podcast detail
episodeById	—	✓	Listen Notes episode detail
bestPodcasts	—	✓	Listen Notes editorial picks per genre / region
genres	—	✓	List all Listen Notes genres with parent / child
trending	—	✓	Listen Notes typeahead (trending shows)

Filters

• Country — 47 ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 codes (US, GB, DE, JP, BR, etc.) for Apple stores.
• Apple genre — 19 top-level genres (Arts, Business, Comedy, Education, News, Technology, True Crime, …).
• Listen Notes region / language — restrict results by ISO country and language name.
• Listen Notes safe mode — filter out explicit content (default on).
• Listen Notes sort by date — newest-first ordering on search.
• Min last episode days — drop podcasts whose latest episode is older than N days.
• Max items — hard cap on records emitted (1–1000).

Example input — daily test

{
    "platform": "applePodcasts",
    "mode": "topPodcasts",
    "country": "us",
    "appleGenre": "technology",
    "maxItems": 10
}

Returns the top 10 technology podcasts in the US store, ranked by Apple's live chart. No API key required.

Example output (truncated)

{
    "platform": "applePodcasts",
    "recordType": "podcast",
    "podcastId": "1200361736",
    "title": "The Daily",
    "publisher": "The New York Times",
    "url": "https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-daily/id1200361736?uo=4",
    "primaryGenre": "Daily News",
    "artworkUrl": "https://is1-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/.../600x600bb.jpg",
    "summary": "This is what the news should sound like…",
    "scrapedAt": "2025-01-01T00:00:00+00:00"
}

FAQ

Do I need an API key? Only for Listen Notes. Apple Podcasts is fully public — switch platform to applePodcasts and you're set.

How do I get a Listen Notes key? Sign up at listennotes.com/api. The free tier gives you 250 calls/month; paid tiers start at $180/month for higher quotas.

Do you support Spotify / Stitcher / Audible? Not yet. Apple + Listen Notes already cover ~90% of public RSS-distributed podcasts. Spotify-exclusive shows are not in either index.

How fresh is Apple's top-podcasts chart? Apple updates these RSS feeds approximately every 1–2 hours.

Can I get all episodes of a podcast? From Apple, you'll need the feedUrl and parse the RSS yourself. From Listen Notes, the /podcasts/{id} endpoint includes recent episodes.

Why are some fields missing from records? The actor follows an "omit-empty" policy — fields the upstream API doesn't populate are excluded entirely (rather than emitting null).

Limitations

• iTunes Search caps at ~20 requests/min/IP. The actor sleeps ~0.6s between calls and retries with Retry-After honor on 429s.
• Listen Notes free tier is 250 calls/month; one search call equals one quota unit.
• Apple's RSS top charts return at most 200 entries per country/genre; for deeper coverage, use searchPodcasts.
• Spotify-exclusive podcasts are not represented in either directory.