What's up with podcast listeners this week? Download numbers are WAY UP.
Ok, something has happened this week. The number of listeners to the ASP.NET Podcast is WAY UP. This is good, but I am trying to figure out why. Overall, we have had about 20,000 downloads of several shows since Tuesday. Here are a couple of thoughts that have come up.
- New version of iTunes. Doubtful. I believe the new iTunes (5.0) came out on Wednesday. Our numbers were up starting Tuesday. iTunes as a percentage of downloads is actually down. I got a piece of feedback from someone a few days ago stating that our feed was not showing up correctly in iTunes.
- Rich Ersek mentioned us in his newsletter at Microsoft. Maybe. Listenership increase at Microsoft would make sense given the limited number of IPs making requests, however, that did not happen until late on Tuesday/early on Wednesday. Our numbers were up starting on Tuesday.
- Libsyn stats may be wrong. Doubtful. While this is always a possibility, I have not found any reports of major errors from their support forums.
- Shorter shows. Maybe. Recently, we have been having shorter shows. These have been around 20-30 minutes. Is this driving more people to listen?
- Podcast listening is like TV listening in that numbers shoot up after Labor Day. Doubtful. I think that you either listen or you don't. Perhaps Jason Salas can provide us with some insight from the TV/Radio side of things.
- I am awesome. Most likely NOT! While that is obviously true, would this drive thousands of people to listen to the show?
- More people need more Wally. Most likely true. Everyone needs more Wally in their life. This would drive more listeners to listen and make their friends listen. You will probably be able to hear the show in coffee shops and other fine establishments. In fact, we are thinking of going on to "talk radio" and kicking Rush off the air.
So, those are a couple of thoughts floating thru my head. If you have any others, please feel free to add them as feedback.
Wally