Podcasting Has Too Many Awards… And No Way To Stop Them

James Cridland is the Editor/Publisher of Podnews, which is a media partner and supporter of the Independent Podcast Awards, which have been held annually in London since 2023.

Independent Podcast Awards

Let’s light the match on awards in the podcasting industry by relating a story from James Cridland, owner/editor of Podnews, a podcast Hall Of Fame inductee, and one of the most respected voices in the industry.

In the January 22, 2026 edition of Podnews, Cridland relates: “At the expo hall in Podfest this year was one booth manned by The International Podcast Awards. This wasn’t an award ceremony I’d heard of, so on the third day of the conference, I went to ask some questions of the guy who was sitting at the booth.”

When Cridland asked “How do the awards work?” He was told that they are free to enter, and if you win, it’s $300 to an awards ceremony in Phoenix AZ, where you get to pick up the award, you get filmed doing an interview, the whole red carpet treatment, but there are other packages available. There are two events a year: the next is scheduled for April 2026, in Arizona.

By email, he asked the International Podcast Awards for a list of winners, and he received a response from… Joshua ‘Atlas’ Aultman, who runs the International Podcast Awards.

He told Cridland: “We asked for/received podcasts and studio nominations through social media in 2025. Awards were announced on social media, but we haven’t created an awardee page yet – this website thing is new. Judges for last cycle were me and my team.”

All this seemed sketchy to Mr. Cridland (and others), but it is emblematic of the multitude of issues surrounding podcast awards. Let’s begin with:

Podcast awards are given away to celebrities to encourage sponsor participation and audience interest.

In January, The Golden Globes nominated and announced the winner of their first podcast award.

The nominees were Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard, Call Her Daddy, Good Hang with Amy Poehler, The Mel Robbins Podcast, SmartLess, and Up First (NPR). Choosing only high-profile podcasts already signals that, going forward, the Golden Globes will ignore quality independent podcasts. The winner was Amy Poehler.

In an op-ed by Abbie Ruzicka for The New York Times published after awards, Ruzicka, a podcast veteran of 13 years, lodged objections to the award process for podcasting. In effect, Ruzicka argued that the Golden Globes treated podcasting as a genre, when it’s an industry, stating, “mashing together news, interview shows, celebrity-driven conversations and self-help monologues doesn’t make much sense.”

Let’s recall how the Golden Globes established its first podcast award.

In effect, eligibility was decided on by the download, listen and views traffic to individual podcasts. Therefore, only the 25 most popular podcasts were even considered. That decision essentially disqualified 99 percent of all podcasts. It would be like if the Oscars decided to only include films that grossed over $500 million domestically.

Can you imagine what would happen at the Golden Globes if a podcast such as Creativity Found by Claire Waite Brown won the award? The live and viewing audience would go, “huh,” despite the fact that the show is a winner that inspires listeners to reconnect with their own creative selves, reminding them that it’s never too late to pursue artistic endeavors and that creativity can be a powerful tool for personal growth and well-being.

The Oscars have found this out the hard way, with films winning Best Picture not well known by the general film-going audience negatively affecting the awards TV ratings. Of the films nominated in 2025, only Sinners was a legitimate box office smash, according to Box Office Mojo.

Many of the more prominent awards skew their nominations and awards process toward celebrities and already established podcasters with strong name recognition.

Jack Newton, an awards consultant, confirms that, “Award shows in all forms of media are concerned about two issues. First, will regular people know the nominees so that interest is piqued on social media, and, second, what nominees will show up at the ceremony if they win.”

For example, it’s common knowledge that in fan-voted shows such as People’s Choice Awards and Nickelodeon Kids’ Choice Awards, the winners know in advance to make sure they can attend in person to collect the award, enhancing the viewing experience.

The submission fees act as the gatekeeper to these awards

One way to restrict submissions is to charge a processing fee that can exclude many smaller, independent podcasts. For example, The Ambies charge $325, which, for a smaller, bootstrapped podcast, is a significant outlay. The Webby Awards charge anywhere from $475 to $675 as an entry fee while the Signal Awards generally charge a submission fee from $215 to $975, depending on the entry type and deadline.

Contrast these fees with smaller, often fan-voted awards. The fan-voted Discover Pods Awards has no entry fee. The NYC Podcast Awards charge $75 for students and $100 for independent creators. The Black Podcasting Awards Black Podcasting Awards, submission fees are structured by date, starting from $25 (May 26–31).

Demetrius Bagley, the executive director of the Black Podcasting Awards, explains: “Our application fees are low by design so that there should be no barrier to applying for the award.”

By contrast, The iHeartPodcast Awards competition does not even accept public submissions or charge entry fees, as the nominees are selected by a panel of industry leaders rather than through an open entry process.

Are there too many awards in podcasting?

Podcasting has high-profile awards, such as The Ambies (The Podcast Academy), iHeartRadio Podcast Awards, the People’s Choice Podcast Awards, Signal Awards, and The Webby Awards. There are awards in many different countries – Australian Podcast Awards, All Ireland Podcast Awards, Australian Podcast Awards – and awards for specific groups such as The Latin Podcast Awards, Women in Podcasting Awards, Women Who Podcast Awards, and International Women’s Podcast Awards.

“Podcasting has so many awards due to its history. ” explains Jack Newton. “The industry’s decentralized nature leads to a host of organizations trying to manage podcasting and awards are a strong motivator to gain some measure of control within the industry. What you get from this chaotic infrastructure is a never-ending awards season in podcasting.”

Greg Wasserman from RSS.Com adds, “There is no single destination that aggregates all podcast awards, nominees, winners, categories, and historical results. A centralized Podcast Awards Database could become a valuable resource for creators, journalists, brands, and researchers. It could also create a historical record of how the medium evolves.”

Rephonic, a comprehensive podcast database, took a shot at creating order in awards via its 2025 article, The Complete List of Podcast Awards. It’s already outdated.

An Awards Success Story

Let’s take a look at an awards process that started from scratch in the United Kingdom in 2023 with a specific objective in mind, which was “to help uncover the talent that we have in the UK that doesn’t always get recognition it deserves.”

Verbal Diorama Creator/Host Em McGowan and Emma Turner from whynow Media, launched The U.K.-based Independent Podcast Awards in 2023. Keep in mind that many podcast awards do not have actual in-person ceremonies or even IRL award statues. It’s often digital representations.

Building from the ground up, McGowan and Turner now have such prominent sponsors as Acast, Adelicious, AudioUK, Captivate, Kings Place, Pod Bible, Podnews, Spotify, Advertising Week Europe, Podknows Podcasting, and Rusty Quill. They also have held in-person ceremonies since 2023. The third edition of the Independent Podcast Awards took place on Wednesday 15th October 2025 at Kings Place in Kings Cross London. Plans are already underway for the 2026 ceremony.

Em McGowan adds: “These awards were launched for those podcasts that are truly free of corporate ties. We’re taking things back to those who create their content in their backrooms, in their spare time and without the pressures of upsetting their sponsors along the way.”

When asked in an interview: “Why are there separate awards for Indie Pods? Is it because they aren’t good enough to win other awards?” McGowan and Turner countered with, “We absolutely don’t think that they’re not good enough. It is recognizing the grassroots talent and bringing it up and getting it the recognition it deserves, which isn’t always easy up against people that have got years of media training and a big production team behind them, and all that kind of thing.”

Maintaining accessibility to podcasts of all sizes and niches, the entry fee for the Independent Podcast Awards is £35 for the first entry and £5 for each subsequent entry.

Final thoughts…Any Solutions?

An EGOT award is the prestigious, rare achievement of winning all four major American entertainment awards: an Emmy (television), Grammy (music), Oscar (film), and Tony (theater). Coined by actor Philip Michael Thomas in 1984, it represents the pinnacle of cross-disciplinary talent in Hollywood. Only 23 people have achieved this milestone, including Steven Spielberg and Jennifer Hudson.

Is there any equivalent in podcasting? Possibly the ASWGGI? For Ambies, Signal, Webby, Golden Globes, iHeart…to name a few. On one hand, the wealth of podcast awards is reaffirming since so many podcasters can win awards for brilliant work. In an industry with approximately 40,000 active podcasts, maybe a robust number of awards is warranted.

After all, unlike movies, TV, and music, podcasting has a panoramic range of genres, niches, styles, formats (audio and video), and creators, from billion-dollar corporations such as Amazon to Jessica Shaw, who is a dedicated parent of neurodivergent kids, hosting a podcast, Everyone Gets a Juice Box about supporting parents with neurodivergent children.

At some point, however, the endless creation of new podcast awards can become so ubiquitous that they could transition into the dreaded participation trophies. No one wants that.