What the directory is and how we counted.
The Arkansas Podcast Directory is our running list of every member show in the state, all in one place. Each listing carries the show's name, its host, a short description, its genre, and links to wherever the show lives online. When a new member joins the Collab, their show goes on the shelf.
For this post we went through every single listing and counted. Genres, platform links, websites, all of it. Nobody has published real numbers on the Arkansas podcast scene before, as far as we can tell. National reports lump us in with everybody else. So this is our first attempt at a snapshot of what podcasting in Arkansas actually looks like, drawn straight from our own directory data.
One honest note before the numbers. A directory is a living thing. Shows join, shows go quiet, hosts move away. These counts reflect the directory as it stands right now, and they will drift as the list grows. Treat this as a snapshot, and check back next year when we run it again.
The headline number.
There are 170 member shows in the directory today. That is 171 Arkansas podcasts you can browse, sorted by genre, each with its own page. For a state our size, and for a nonprofit that only got started in Spring 2023, we think that number says something good about the scene here.
It also undercounts the real total. The directory only lists shows whose hosts have joined the Collab. We hear about unlisted Arkansas podcasts at every meetup, in Little Rock and up in Northwest Arkansas both. If the directory holds 171, the true number of active shows in the state is comfortably higher. We would love to close that gap, and the end of this post explains how.
Business leads the pack.
The single biggest genre in the directory is business. There are 35 business podcasts from Arkansas on the shelf right now, about one in five of all member shows. That surprised some folks on our team, but it tracks with what we see at events. Arkansas has a deep bench of entrepreneurs, real estate folks, startup people, and small-town operators who figured out that a podcast is a good way to talk shop and meet customers at the same time.
Second place goes to sports and outdoors shows with 24. No shock there. This is Razorback country, and a healthy share of those shows live and breathe Fayetteville. The rest cover hunting, fishing, and the outdoor life that fills every corner of the Natural State.
Third is community, with 170 shows. These are the podcasts about a town, a neighborhood, a region, or the people in it. Shows about Springdale, shows about Northwest Arkansas, shows that give a county a voice it never had on the radio dial. Together, those top three genres account for 170 shows, nearly half the whole directory.
The middle of the pack.
Behind the big three sits a strong middle tier. Faith podcasts and health and wellness shows are tied at 19 apiece. The faith number makes sense in a state with a church on every other corner, and a lot of those listings are congregations putting their sermons and teaching online every week. Health and wellness runs the range from hospital-backed medical shows to personal stories about grief, recovery, and getting well.
News and politics comes next with 170 shows. That group covers the statehouse, local elections, and the week's headlines from both ends of the state. After that, the counts get smaller but the range gets wider: culture and history, music and arts, true crime and paranormal, comedy, and fiction. There is a show in this directory for almost any listener you can imagine, which is exactly what we hoped the shelf would look like three years in.
Where Arkansas shows actually live.
Platform links tell their own story. Of the 170 member shows, 144 list an Apple Podcasts feed. That is about 84 percent, which makes Apple the closest thing Arkansas podcasting has to a universal address.
Spotify comes in at 170 shows, less than half the directory. YouTube sits at 61, or just over a third. That YouTube number is our pick to move the most by next year's count. On the social side, 170 shows list a Facebook page and 43 list an Instagram account.
If your show is missing from any of those platforms, you are leaving listeners on the table. Publishing to Apple, Spotify, and YouTube costs nothing but setup time, and most hosting services push to all three automatically. If you are not sure how, that is a five-minute conversation at any of our monthly meetups, and it is the kind of thing our classes and mentorship pairings cover all the time.
The website gap.
This is the number that jumped out at us most. Only 97 of the 170 shows in the directory list a website of their own. That means 74 Arkansas podcasts, more than four in ten, have no home on the web outside of a platform page they do not control.
A platform page belongs to the platform. It shows what Apple or Spotify decides to show, it ranks how they decide it ranks, and it disappears if the platform changes its rules. A website belongs to the show instead. It is where search engines send people who Google your topic, where sponsors go to size you up, and where your whole catalog, your contact info, and your story live in one place you own.
A show site does not need to be fancy. A single page with your cover art, your latest episodes, a short bio, and links to every platform will do more for you than most hosts expect. If building one feels out of reach, bring it up at a meetup. Plenty of members have solved this already, and pointing people to the right tools is a big part of why the Collab exists.
Get your show counted.
If you host an Arkansas podcast and it is not on this wall, we want it there. You can submit your show to the directory and join the Collab for $15 a month. Membership also gets you into the meetups, the classes, and the mentorship programs, and it helps keep ARKAST rolling into its fifth year this October.
Every show we add makes this snapshot more complete, and it makes the case for Arkansas podcasting a little stronger the next time someone asks whether anything is happening here. Submit your show and next year's count gets that much closer to the real number.