Here's a list of countries that prohibit explicit content in Apple Podcasts
From time to time, clients ask me whether they should mark their show as explicit. Most podcast hosting companies offer the option to mark individual episodes (or the entire show) as explicit, and many podcast apps denote explicit content with an E symbol:
STRANGER FRUIT (with explicit tags) in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Google Podcasts
Clients often want to know about the impact of marking their show explicit. They want to know what they might be giving up, audience-wise.
Aside from the obvious and unmeasurable impact (“explicit” is a no-go for some listeners, and a selling point for others), marking your show explicit also has a less obvious impact on your show’s global availability.
As Apple says in their documentation:
Explicit Content: Podcasts containing explicit material can‘t be distributed in some countries and regions.
Whenever I share this information with clients, they inevitably ask, “Well, which countries?”
I’ve never had a good answer to this, and as far as I can tell, Apple doesn’t publish a list of countries and regions where they don’t distribute explicit content.
So I did some digging.
Turns out, Apple Podcasts has a /storefronts/ API endpoint that lists 175 countries and regions, and each one has an explicitContentPolicy value of allowed, prohibited, or opt-in. Of the 175 countries and regions:
- 133 allow explicit content
- 8 prohibit explicit content
- 35 allow users to opt-in to explicit content
Allowed and prohibited are pretty self-explanatory. Opt-in is a bit trickier.
In countries with an opt-in policy, explicit content is disabled by default, but can be manually enabled. If a user tries to play explicit content in the Apple Podcasts app, they’ll be prompted with an alert. If they allow the explicit content to be played, any subsequent taps on explicit context will be playable without an alert. All of this can be managed through Screen Time settings.
To me, this is one of the biggest things to consider when choosing whether to mark your episodes as explicit. In 35 countries, you’re adding a potential speed bump to potential listeners, and in 8 countries, you’re making your content unavailable to Apple Podcasts users.
I’ve listed the explicit content policies for all 175 countries and regions in the table below. I hope this helps you make an informed decision about your own content.