A Pointed Perspective on the Purported Podfading Problem
Recently, my friend Steve Goldstein posted an article using stats from Blubrry that track the total number of historical podcasts (approximately 706,000) and the percentage of those that were updated in the last year (39%) or even Feb-April of this year (18%).
I’ve seen this article and the Blubrry stats shared across social media and multiple podcasting groups on Facebook as evidence of “Podfading,” and the reactions have ranged from well-meaning encouragement to, well, a bit judgy, I think. “Be consistent!” “Stick with it!” “I haven’t missed a show in 5/10/15 years!”
You get the picture.
I think Steve’s point at the end of the article gets lost: it’s really hard to make the kind of content that is good enough to create an audience. Podcasting gurus will tell you that consistency over time is the key to building an audience. Maybe that was true for podcasting in 2006, when people listened to podcasts because they were podcasts. Today, people listen to podcasts because they are great shows. And great shows, my friends, are not easy.
But as someone who has immersed himself in the numbers of podcasting for nearly 15 years, let me put these “podfading” numbers in perspective.
