Podcast Subscriber Tracking Is Pointless

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I know it sounds totally crazy, but you really don't have to care about how many people are subscribed to your podcast.

Last week a new service launched (not important enough to name or link) that lets anybody see how many subscribers any podcast has.

No, there isn’t a privacy issue here. This service simply checks the handful of podcast listening apps that publicly report this data and aggregates all the info. When the buzz hit last week, many podcasters who checked their own show reported that the public subscriber counts didn’t match up with the private download data provided by their podcast hosting company, the service responsible for serving the media files.

So what's going on here? Nothing of importance, other than a chance to remind you that subscriber counts are pointless.

What Makes Podcast Subscribers The Worst Metric To Track?

Take this show, for example. The service in question reported my biggest audience of “subscribers” are on SoundCloud. As a working podcaster, you should be familiar with SoundCloud, an online music service that barely supports podcasting. (Sorry, SoundCloud, but it’s not like you haven't tried to figure out podcasting for a long time and continued to pull up short.) Yes, I do publish my episodes on SoundCloud. My philosophy of podcast distribution is to put the show and it’s episodes everywhere and anywhere someone might want to listen. SoundCloud is one of those.

Yet when I look at my downloads from SoundCloud, the picture is quite different. I get only a handful of downloads from SoundCloud. And if an episode of the show isn’t downloaded (streamed, whatever), it can’t be listened to.

Subscriber count doesn’t matter. I’m personally subscribed to something like 178 shows in Apple Podcasts. Do I listen to every episode published by those shows? Of course not. Some (most) haven’t been touched in so long, Apple isn’t even checking the feed for new episodes anymore.

Subscriber count doesn’t matter. Poll the new wave of listeners coming into podcasting, and you’ll find many don’t even know how to or understand why they should subscribe. They’re sampling episodes or getting them catch-as-catch-can when the episodes come across their social feeds. They’re following episode lists provided by “tastemakers”. They don’t need to subscribe to keep their listening queues full.

But my biggest beef with counting podcast subscribers is that they don't represent anything tangible.

Inflated Vanity Metrics Aren't Helping Podcasters Understand Performance

Ask any email marketer out there about their open rate. Or do a search for the current average open rate for an email campaign and you’ll be shocked at how few people open emails they have specifically subscribed to. Then reflect on your own inbox. How many un-opened emails from various places do you have?

Take a look at the gigantic YouTube channels, some with tens of thousands of subscribers or more. With few exceptions, those channels don’t see tens of thousands or millions of views on their video. It’s often only a single-digit percentage of subscribers who actually watch any of the videos published by those channels.

Think of all the apps you have on your phone that send you push-notifications that new content is available. How often do you respond to that notification? How easily do you ignore that ever-incrementing number in the little red bubble?

Why would you think it's any different for people who subscribe to a podcast?

Should You Stop Trying To Grow Podcast Subscriptions?

Not that I’m suggesting having subscribers is a bad thing. Clearly it’s not, and clearly having more subscribers is better than having less. So yes, you should continue to ask people to subscribe to your show. I'm not suggesting you stop doing that.

I am suggesting that tracking subscriber count is something you should stop doing. And if you’ve done something silly, like continue to use FeedBurner or some other service that claims to provide an accurate subscriber count, stop that right now. You're wasting your time and probably putting potential listeners through a whole lot of hoops they don't need to go through just to listen to your show.

So yes, list your show everywhere. And yes, encourage people to subscribe. But stop trying to count the subscribers of your podcast. That number just doesn't matter.

What does matter is that you go to RateThisPodcast.com/podpont and rate this podcast. Also, if you found the information I provided today (or inside any of my 260 other episodes) informative and helpful, please go to BuyMeACoffee.com/EvoTerra and buy me a coffee. If you really love me, you’ll set that system to buy me a coffee every month.

And if you need help with the business strategy behind your show, that's what we do here at Simpler Media Productions. Check us out at SimplerMedia.pro. You can also send me an email at evo@podcastlaunch.pro if you have questions.

I'll be back next Monday because the rest of this week I'll be attending Podcast Movement Evolutions this week in Los Angeles. When I return, I’ll do another Podcast Pontifications.

Cheers!

Published On:

February 11, 2020

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Most podcasters want one thing for people to listen to their content, so it makes sense that understanding of podcasts, total subscriber count would be a good thing. Only it isn't.

Hello, and welcome to another podcast. Pontifications with me. Evo Terra. I know it sounds totally crazy, but really you don't have to care about how many people are subscribed to your podcast. You really, really don't. This came up last week because a new service, which I'm not even going to mention because it doesn't matter, but a new web service, a new ish web service, came online.

Letting podcasters, letting anybody. Enter in a name of a podcast and it would go and return for you. The count of subscribers that podcast had on a handful of apps and it was like, goodness, what interesting information this have. Said some podcasters said many other podcasters. Um, these numbers don't seem to line up with what my podcast hosting company, the per service that's responsible for serving the media files.

It shows a totally different picture. What's going on here. What's going on here was a bunch of FID being sewn, FUD, fear, uncertainty, and doubt, which for no apparent reason, I don't know, I guess it wasn't fun regardless. Anyhow, this service did exactly what it said. It would take the name of a podcast, it would go find the name of that podcast or a close match, which was one of the problems, and check the various apps.

That would. That typically not typically, that always report subscriber count and it would bring that back. And it was this fascinating thing. Everybody was all excited about it, but again, it was, it was kind of pointless. And the reason it was pointless was this. For example, it showed for this particular program I do called podcast pontifications, that the biggest number of subscribers I had came from sound cloud.

Now you are a working podcast. Are you likely are familiar with a, the sound cloud, which is a online music sharing service more than anything else that barely supports podcasting. Sorry, SoundCloud. Not like you haven't tried to do this for a long time, but you haven't. And yes, I do publish my episodes on SoundCloud because there are some people who use SoundCloud and my philosophy of podcast distribution is put your show and your episodes everywhere and anywhere someone might want to listen.

SoundCloud is one of those for me. SoundCloud, by far was my biggest, biggest number, but it's completely and totally untrue because while I might have a whole lot of people who are subscribed to my show on SoundCloud. I don't have very many people that listen to my show on SoundCloud. In fact, one of my clients, she showed a crazy number of subscribers, like 5,000 subscribers on SoundCloud.

So I went and checked. She does not have 5,000 subscribers on SoundCloud. That's another podcast, which has a very similar name that this system got wrong, but even if she did have 5,000 subscribers on SoundCloud, she wouldn't have 5,000 listeners. You see a subscriber count. Doesn't take into consideration the way that podcast listening works now.

Now, maybe you like me. We do subscribe to a lot of shows. I have something like 178 subscriptions in my podcast listener. I use Apple podcasts. Do I listen to 174 shows, episodes of those shows every single week or sometimes daily, though definitely not. Many of those shows are subscribed at their old subscriptions.

Many of those subscribed, those subscriptions aren't being updated regularly, but that's all fine and good for me. But for the new wave of of listeners, as I've talked about previously on the show, there's not a lot of subscription that's happening. People are more sampling shows. They're are listening to one or two episodes.

They're going back and checking. I know it sounds weird and wild, but that's the reality of things. But to me, the biggest problem with subscriptions is that they don't represent anything. Ask any email marketer out there. Go do a search of what's the average open rate for an email marketer, and what you'll see is that while it's great to have 100,000 subscribers to your email, or even a hundred people who have given their email address to your system and said, yes, please automatically send me email every week when someone gets my episode, or every time I put out a new, an article or whatever.

You will find that your open rates hover around the 40% Mark 40% that means 60% don't even open the emails you get. Now, if you think that's crazy and you don't believe that, would you take a look at your inbox, that overflowing thing that you've probably have and see how many automatic emails you get that you do not open.

Why would you think it's any different for podcasting? It's easy to click the button that says subscribe. Sure, but what about actually listening? Okay. Take a look at the gigantic YouTube channels. Tens of thousands of subscribers, millions of subscribers. They don't have tens of thousands or millions of views on their video.

Quite often for YouTube, it's an even lower number. I mean, this oftentimes single digit percentages. Sometimes there's no relationship between total subscriber account and actual views. The video, it's no different in podcasting. These apps like SoundCloud, but also many others, they make it easier for you to subscribe, but they are, and the only thing that really does is causes a little alert window.

Maybe if someone still has that enabled to show a little red icon when a new episode is released. But how many of those things have you ignored on your phone? See, subscriptions, buying over themselves aren't all that important. It's the activity of listening that you really want to do. So it's great that you have all these subscribers.

That's wonderful, and yes, you should continue to ask people to subscribe to your show. I'm not suggesting you stop doing that. But just understand that that big subscriber count, it really means nothing. And even a small subscriber counts doesn't mean very much. It's not as important as you would think it is.

So if you're going out of your way to really try and track subscribers, like you've done something silly, like continue to use FeedBurner. Or some other service because it gives you what you think is an accurate subscriber account. You're just wasting your time and probably putting people through a whole lot of hoops they don't need to go through.

Yes. List your show everywhere. Yes. Encourage people to subscribe, but stop trying to attract subscribers for your podcast. It just doesn't matter. What does matter. Is that you go to rate this podcast.com/pod pond and, uh, you know, rate this podcast simple enough to do. Also, if you found the information I provided today or any of my 260 other episodes, informative and helpful, go to buy me a coffee.com/evo Terra and, you know, buy me a coffee.

You can set it up so that it buys me a coffee automatically every single month. Coffee is more important than subscribers. And if you need help with your business, podcast setting strategy for your show, all of those sorts of things, which just get tricky. Why that's what we do here at simpler media productions.

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