I’ve been podcasting proper for almost a year now, so I thought I would have a peek proper at the download statistics. It’s an encouraging look — over 81 000 MP3 Acecast podcasts have been downloaded since I started with proper music podcasts in March 2005 (testing started in late 2004). The total number of downloads is a bit higher (85 000?), since the first combined Marvin Suicide/Acecast show is hosted at the Internet Archive and I have no numbers for this one (note to self: use http redirect the next time around). With ten shows this gives a rough average of 8000 downloads pr show.

There wasn’t much new content in early December and the Christmas show was released on 28 December so that might explain the dip in December and January. A new podcast is ready later today, so hopefully the rot can be reversed.

I am quite pleased by the numbers — they prove a couple of things. One is that an iTunes listing is not that important — produce decent content and your site will be “discovered” (the bulk of content being the music; I am working on my presentation and production skills and would like to think they have improved over the year). Another is that you have to be patient — it takes a while to build an audience. If you are not prepared to stay some distance — don’t start blogging or podcasting. Blogging might be easy; podcasting is not (see “podfading”).

I am fully aware that 80 000 accesses does not equal 80 000 listeners or listens. Some downloads will have been aborted, some will have downloaded a show and never listened to it. But even with a tenth of the numbers I would have been pleased for such a narrowcasted show.

Have a look at that pie chart for downloads so far for February. I have said so before — give your listeners a chance to download your latest show directly from a prominent place on your site. A good percentage of your audience will come over the web (acecastlatest.mp3 is not referenced in any RSS feeds).

The reason for this exercise is threefold —

• it gives me an incentive to go into a second year of podcasts
• I would like to have an idea what impact iTunes have if I ever get a listing (please do not submit my feed)
• it might give me some leverage when asking artists to do intros for Acecast (no naming and shaming here — but a handful of artists never delivered on their promise)

Thanks to Stillman and Penny Broadhurst though. Penny has just started her “Instant Classic” podcasts — one to watch (or rather listen to).