How do you like them apples ?

BBC Sounds now has 3m weekly users. This "huge growth", after nearly a year of in-yer-face tv advertising, is some 300k above the old, largely unadvertised, iPlayer Radio app.

3m weekly users puts the service ahead of Radio 6Music (annual budget £12m), but behind Radio 5Live (£46m).  One day the BBC will tell us how much is being spent on this service.

Like the recent iPlayer stats for drama, Sounds is using a brand new currency to claim success - cumulative listening figures. Even naughtier, it includes listeners outside the UK - where the BBC Sounds app is not yet available, and therefore the old iPlayer Radio app is the only vehicle.

Thus Brexitcast/Electioncast tops this new list, with more than 14m combined downloads or plays on BBC Sounds and other platforms in the UK and outside of the UK over the year. Yet there were 109 episodes over the year - by my maths, that's an average audience of 128,000 per show.

In second place in the list is That Peter Crouch Podcast, at "around 12m". There were 16 new episodes this calendar year, which by my maths, equals 750k per show, and should put it top of the leader board. But it's possible that the BBC figures are including all available episodes - 30 still available on Sounds - moving it to 400k - still ahead of Brexitcast.

Third place goes to Beyond Today, with 8.5m.  The Times has calculated the average downloads per episode at 37,000. If you count all 293 still available, it comes down to 29,000. In fact, The Times is on the case here, noting that The Archers, if counted cumulatively, would top this list, at 49m downloads, followed by  In Our Time at 34m  and Desert Island Discs, 30m. But that's not the news the BBC wants you to hear.