Which podcasts are eligible for the 2021 Discover Pods Awards?

The Discover Pods Awards are an annual awards celebrating the best podcasts from their respective year. To accomplish this — and highlight deserving podcasts — we have several categories and criteria to focus our awards and selection process.

In order for a podcast to be eligible for a Discover Pods Award, it must meet the following requirements:

  • Be a podcast. Specifically, this means no YouTube shows, Twitch streams, etc. We’re talking on-demand audio preferably with an accessible RSS feed.
  • Actively producing new episodes in 2021.
  • Oh hey, that’s it.

For Best New Podcast, a show is only eligible if it premiered since the previous Discover Pods Awards closed nominations. For 2021, the show would have to have premiered after October 8, 2020.

Is there an entrance fee to nominate my podcast?

Nope. Unlike other awards, we’re not pay-for-play, entries are completely free without any fine print. We’ve intended the awards to be inclusive no matter if you’re recording in your closet or a major studio and having a fee to enter seems counterproductive to that goal.

I’m not sure which category a podcast falls under?

Our award categories were designed to closely mirror the top-level Apple Podcast categories. If you’re unsure where yours or your favorite podcast should be nominated, please find the respective category in Apple Podcasts.

For the category-specific awards, a single podcast may only appear as a finalist in one category.

To qualify for the Best LGBTQ+ Podcast, the podcast needs to deal with queer life, culture, or history.

How does the nomination and voting work?

Nominations

For about two weeks, anyone can nominate any podcast through the nomination portal. Once nominations close, a committee made up of Discover Pods staff and outside podcast folks will sift through the nominations and determine up to 20 finalists for each category.

While total nominations are a factor in determining the finalists, they are not the sole factor. We aim to balance and pair nominations along with committee opinions to ultimately determine the finalists. Basically, there’s essentially no advantage to stuffing the ballot.

Final Voting

One final round of voting will determine the winners for each category. The final voting is a pure popular vote without any committee interjection. The winners will be announced shortly after.

Can I campaign on my podcasts behalf?

Yes, definitely. Encourage your listeners to vote and help spread the word.

How do you stop ballot stuffing?

We have an email gate that verifies valid emails are used in both the nominations and final voting. Any additional entries using the same email address will be delete the previous entry automatically. We also ensure there’s no voting discrepancies by monitoring IP addresses and similar voting patterns.

For the nominations, there’s no benefit to loading the ballot box unfairly.

If a podcast is identified as stuffing the ballot, we’ll automatically disqualify it.

Why didn’t my show win?

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Have another question? Email us.