There are 2 million active podcasts in the world. This one, hosted by a language teacher from Myanmar and proudly brought to you by a US company, is going for the top 5% by uniquely combining the topics of language learning, productivity, and lifestyle design in a way that had never been done before.
What makes this podcast special?
According to the podcast industry statistics, there are more than two million active podcasts and over 48 million podcast episodes as of 2022. This compilation of data suggests that if an episode gains approximately 3,400 downloads, it’s in the top 10% of podcasts. Due to this crazy competition, an average podcast only earns 141 downloads in the first month post-publishing. That means about 50% of all podcasts, a million podcasts in another word, have a hard time trying to get an episode downloaded more than that number in the first 30 days after publishing.
But that’s not the case with Voice of Sayar Henry podcast. With VOSH, that average number can be hit easily in the first 48 hours after an episode is published. And here is the crazy part. Over the course of 14 months, from June 2021 to August 2022, Sayar Henry published just a total of 40 episodes. It means we’re seeing these numbers even though VOSH is not a weekly podcast, which is an unusual progress in this industry. Furthermore, this suggests that Voice of Sayar Henry is gradually climbing up to the top 20% of all podcasts not by having a substantially large pre-existing audience like that of a celebrity, nor by publishing a ton of episodes frequently and favoring quantity over quality. VOSH is achieving it purely with some really thoughtful and high quality episodes that listeners are happily coming back for.
To put things in perspective, let’s use some of the data provided by Anchor, the platform that hosted Voice of Sayar Henry from June 2021 to September 2022, and then some analytics from Apple Podcasts. It’s worth taking a look at these numbers because interpreting these can help us determine the value and the performance of this podcast. After all, numbers don’t lie. Please note that all data are dated from June 2021 to August 2022. Newer data as of November 2022 is also included in the later part of this page.
An overview of Anchor’s data suggests that there are approximately 24,000 meaningful plays throughout the lifetime of this podcast (as of August, 2022). The graph above shows how these plays were distributed every week within the time frame. This is what we’re talking about earlier when we said an episode of VOSH can achieve much better than that of a million other podcasts in just a couple of days. There are hundreds of plays every week even when the podcast is not publishing.
Now let’s see the data from Apple Podcasts Connect.
Apple’s statistics is indicating that out of 475 followers of VOSH on Apple Podcasts, 389 of them are engaged listeners. That means approximately 82 % of people who listen to this podcast are actively and repeatedly coming back for more. It also appears that VOSH is attracting new listeners every now and then, and consistently turning them into followers.
The number of listeners we have seen above is just from Apple Podcasts alone. According to Anchor’s data, that represents just 46 % of the total number of listeners across all platforms. So, there could be a lot more going on with the number of fans on other platforms combined. For example, there are 400+ subscribers on Google Podcasts which still only accounts for 13% of this audience.
Audience loyalty matters.
So let’s take a look at the audience — who they are and where they are listening from.
According to the data from Spotify and Anchor, Voice of Sayar Henry seems to have been appealing more to male than to other genders, but it is diverse enough to attract a decent proportion of female and non-binary listeners too. It’s also obvious that this podcast is resonating well with Generation Y and Z.
During the month of September, 2022, the podcast gained significant jump in listenership. Therefore, Sayar Henry decided to move the podcast from Anchor to RedCircle in October 2022, and started monetizing with ads. Since then, the number of daily downloads has been increasing every week.
By looking at these figures, one can conclude with confidence that Voice of Sayar Henry is not just another podcast that people could forget once they have the time to sit down and properly tune in to an episode. The topics and sound design of each episode are meticulously crafted to make it worthwhile for listeners to revisit the old episodes multiple times. Though the fanbase at the moment is not very big, the podcast is on its way, at its own pace, to the top 5% of all the podcasts in the world. It is made to grow, and designed to last.
If you’re an advertiser who sees the value of this rising podcast, you can contact us to talk about sponsorships and advertising opportunities. Or if you are in the business of content creation, you might want to check out our services.
To those who stumbled upon this website by accident, we are glad that you are here! Allow us to welcome you with one of the most popular and touching episodes from Voice of Sayar Henry. Just sit back, relax, and embrace the show. (Headphones recommended)
For a complete list of all published episodes, please go to Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or Audible.
SH Learning Culture 