Listeners to my podcast

I knew that when I added "one little spark" to my podcast, where I talk about social issues, I would lose some listeners.

But I felt like it was the right thing to do, and as I've said, Walt himself was engaged in social issues - and his business and politics are intertwined very deeply.

So in spite of protests that "this is a Disney podcast! Why are you doing this?!" I pressed on and will continue to do so.

And of course, I saw a drop in listeners.

But here's where things get interesting. In looking over my all-time listener count, I saw a trend from where I started: my podcast grew, and grew, and grew.

In October of 2019, I had around 1,000 subscribers, and was regularly averaging over 1,500 listens to podcasts. It was going well.

But sometime in November, I lost about 300 regular subscribers, and the listens dropped off about 30% as well.

And that number didn't return, so it's not a glitch. It was a trend.

But why did I lose that base? My podcast remained largely the same until sometime after the pandemic started, maybe 4 months later. No social commentary. Nothing about anything Disney was doing that I felt strongly about.

I looked at the episodes and I'm pretty sure none were controversial. Nothing that would cause people to leave suddenly in large numbers.

The dropoff happened after I published a pair of my most popular episodes, about a the John Lennon visit, and a park visit.

Why would people leave after hearing those?

And then as the pandemic started taking over life in March, I started wavering, based on the world around us. I said some things about the company, politics, flori-duhs gubnor, and the dipshit in the Oval Office. I did lose a few listeners, but nothing truly out of the ordinary.

When I started the Spark segment, I saw an expected drop. And I got some harsh feedback.

But the drop didn't happen all at once, it was a downward trend over the course of about 6 months.

The numbers showed about 30% of my remaining listeners unsubscribed.

I have added and lost some listeners over the last two years, but it looks like my base might be trending upward-ish currently.

So as it stands today, I'm at around 50% of the listeners I had at the peak.

Yeah, my social commentary drove away some people (who I would argue have such small brains, they can't handle actually thinking). But many more left before I even started this segment (in real numbers it's around 300 vs 200).

I just can't figure out why so many people unsubscribed. So strange.

It could be something that happened on the interwebs unrelated to anything I did. But I can't find a cause that makes sense, even considering that. Subscribers and individual listens both went down. And never came back.