Download Counts, A Running Tally

S2EA "The Line" - 9/9/09 TO 9/12/09 (3 full days in release)

iTunes: 203
Site: 133
Zune: 202

Total: 538

This is on track with 203 and 204. However, 203 (as you'll recall) continued to draw in significant daily download counts for about two weeks (and maintained sizable dl counts throughout its initial run), whereas 204 crashed after the first three days in release. This next few days is where we'll find out what pattern "The Line" is to follow.

Spread the word!

After eighteen days, we are at 953 dl's.

I'll try to get a formal report out on or around the all-important Day 21, but I would love to see us break 1000 dl's in time for the occasion.

"The Line" after 40 days (six weeks) in release (9/9 - 10/19):

Zune: 467
iTunes: 450
Site: 248

Total: 1165 dls

"The Line" is still trailing 203's dl counts, whose download counts were nothing short of astounding during its first week of release (and to this day I don't know why, except that it was a damn good episode), but "The Line" is doing quite a bit better than 204 did. More auspiciously, people are continuing to download "The Line" several times a day even now, which means new listeners are still discovering and enjoying it. Having that "long tail" is a big part of building a long-term audience.

In short, other than 203, "The Line" is our most successful episode to date. With 205 coming out tonight or tomorrow, I wanted to note where we stand with "The Line," and I hope we're about to see 205 continue our audience-building trend. We'll be checking in with "The Line" one more time, during its eleventh week in release, to see how it matches up with 203's full eleven-week first-run.

Now, bed. It's midnight here.

Incidentally, do people still read these? Do you, the forumgoers, care about the download counts, or is it just trivia? Honestly, let me know here.

I read and take notice...

Excellent! Then I guess I'll keep writing them. I certainly enjoy them, even when I would prefer to be getting more dl's.

An addendum: I just noticed that the way I programmed the big orange Subscribe button (which you find on our site now on the left sidebar) is such that we do not record downloads obtained through that feed. Incredibly dumb programming mistake on my part. Problem is, I'm not sure what I can do to fix it now. I'll have to sleep on it.

Point is that, ever since September 9th, we have not been recording all downloads. We have no way of retrieving that information, and I'm not sure how we can change it to start recording them now.

I don't think it makes much difference, because, in any group of 1000 internet users, perhaps 50 of them know enough about RSS to use it and perhaps 5 of them will care enough about Excelsior to subscribe via that RSS feed. So we're probably not underreporting by very much. But it is worth noting for the sake of completeness -- all dl counts for all episodes from September 9th on have been underreported by an unknown (but probably small) margin.

Any idea how 2.05 is doing?

Let's find out.

Zune: 186
iTunes: 324
Site: 111

Total: 621

Where the heck did our Zune downloads go? That's a really huge drop-off from our previous numbers there. I'm pleased with the iTunes counts, but... that's weird. And, overall, I'm disappointed with these numbers, gotta say.

Ah, well. In the end, I don't do it for the dlc's. I do it for anyone who wants to listen to these adventures.

Because "you do the good work"?

Ah, if only it were as simple as pointing to an episode and saying, "Well, that clearly backfired." But if that were the case -- if we put out a sucky episode -- the downloads would (should) drop across all three download channels.

The fact that they only dropped on one makes me wonder whether there's a technical problem. Perhaps an update to the Zune store deleted our podcast? Does anyone have a Zune and could maybe look into it? More likely, though, Zune changed something technical in how the podcasts are downloaded by the clients, and it's affecting our dlc's.

It's worth noting that this happened once before: the surprising success of "Her Hardest Hue to Hold" was also due to a rapid and unexpected increase in Zune downloads. So maybe Zune is just a really volatile marketplace filled with the most fickle of users.

*shrug*