All creators can now view metrics for Followers in Apple Podcasts Connect.
From the Analytics tab, you can view followers per show and measure followers across shows.
After selecting a show, you can quickly view the number of New Followers netted over the last week, month, 60 days, and all time. You can also see Time Listened as a precent of those following and not following the show.
By navigating to the Trends menu, you can view a graph of followers over time and the number of followers gained or lost on a specific day or during a specified range.
There’s another support document all about Followers:
When Apple introduced support for podcasts in iTunes, listeners could “subscribe” to podcasts to add them to their libraries, automatically download new episodes, and sync them to their iPods. Since then, “following” an account online has become widely adopted and well-understood, and creators are pursuing new ways of monetizing their work. To reflect these developments, and make clear what content is available for free to listeners, the term “subscribe” was updated to “follow” throughout Apple Podcasts in winter 2021, and is often denoted with the “+” button. Now, listeners can follow shows to automatically download and receive notifications for new episodes and, with Apple Podcasts Subscriptions, subscribe to shows and channels to support creators and unlock premium experiences.
I appreciate the link to that 2005 press release, and I think these new metrics look really nice. Of course, this won’t give you the full picture of your podcast’s health unless all of your listeners are using Apple Podcasts, but this is a nice addition to the tools podcasters have to understand how their shows are doing.