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Subie Scoop - September 22
About this episode
Celebrating personal milestones and community connections, the host shares exciting news about becoming a grandpa and teaching manual driving through Manual Driving Academy. The episode dives into podcast industry stats, highlighting how few shows surpass 100 episodes, placing this podcast in a rare group. Reflections on attending Overland Expo events emphasize the joy of meeting listeners and fellow Subaru enthusiasts in person. Upcoming plans include attending Overland Expo East and producing a bonus episode featuring non-Subaru owners exploring the brand.
Topics:
personal milestones
manual driving instruction
podcast industry statistics
podcast longevity
community events
Overland Expo
Subaru enthusiasts
podcast growth
in-person connections
bonus episodes
In this edition of the Subie Scoop I share some very exciting family news, a new side hustle I am doing, and some general podcast metrics.
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Hello there, and welcome to another edition of the Subi Scoop.
I'm just going to put it out there.
If you didn't see it in my stories, I'm going to be a grandpa, and my daughter's
baby is going to be a little girl.
Of course, we have known for a while, but she wanted to wait until she got blood work
back, saying that everything was okay, and then, of course, you know, it's good to wait
until you're further along to let everybody know.
But she also wanted to wait until she found out the gender.
So we had a little family gender reveal on Friday, and it was really, really special.
So her grandmother was the only one that knew what was going on as far as the gender,
and so for the rest of it was all a surprise.
So she had baked some cupcakes and put pink filling in there, like pink icing, I guess,
in the middle of the cupcakes, and so we all said three, two, one, or maybe it was one,
two, three, and yeah, it was one, two, three, and go, and everybody took a bite so that
we could see what the color was inside of the cupcake.
Of course, it was pink, and so we're all very, very excited.
And also, we also did a poll about what it was going to be, whether it's going to be a
girl or a boy, and the boy went out in the poll, but it's a girl.
So of course, we didn't really care whether it was going to be a boy or a girl, we just
are happy to have, I'm happy to have a grandbaby, a granddaughter now, and then we're going
to have great grandparents, which is super, super cool.
I'm glad that they are going to be around to see a great grandchild, and that's like
really, really special, and I know a lot of people sometimes don't have that opportunity
to either have grandparents or have great-grandparents, so it's a really special time, going to be
a new chapter in all of our lives, and we're all really, really excited.
But I figured I would start out the Subi Scoop like that and give the big news.
So something else new that's going on, if you've seen in the Stories on Pearl's page
last weekend, I think it was, yeah, it was last weekend, I posted a photo in my Stories
showing my OEM shifter knob and then my custom shift knob kind of off to the side, and
then this past Saturday I posted another picture of my OEM shift knob, and that's because I joined
Manual Driving Academy as an instructor.
One of my friends was telling me about this and I thought that would be kind of cool to
teach people how to drive a manual because it's something that I really, really enjoy
doing, and it's a good way to make a little extra money at doing something that I love.
So I've given two lessons so far.
The first guy did a pretty good job, but I think he was just really timid and kind of
nervous to get into driving, and then the second guy was like super eager and ready
to go and he did an awesome job, and so we use our own car and we do it in a parking
lot that's empty so that there's not really any other cars around, and so it'll be
a little bit safer.
I taught my son how to drive my car so not like saying that I'm some kind of professional
instructor, but I've actually learned a lot about my car as I've been doing these instructions
because when I drive my car I just drive it, I just go, I don't think about it,
and so as I'm trying to teach people how to drive a manual and my car is doing certain
things like when it stalls and why it stalls, when somebody that doesn't know how to
drive a manual is trying to figure it out, it's actually helping me learn more about
why my car stalls in certain situations as far as what they're doing.
Of course I'm not a super expert manual driver by any means because I still stall
occasionally, and sometimes you know it's not the smoothest shifting as I'm shifting
through the first few gears, but it's always fun no matter what.
And anyway so when you see me post a photo in Pearl Story with my OEM shifter that's
why because I am an instructor for Manual Driving Academy and I'm looking forward to helping
more people learn how to drive manual.
Something else that I did specifically for this edition of the Subi Scoop is something
that I've been wanting to do for a quite a while, for a long time.
I've done it before but I haven't done it in a really long time and that is
getting some podcast metrics not for my podcast specifically, but podcasts in general as far
as like how many there are, how many active podcasts there are, what the percentages are
of you know podcasts going over a certain number of episodes so that's some information
that I got for this edition as well.
I wasn't always a big fan of it but mainly because I hadn't really used it but also I just
didn't want to sit around and chat with a computer all day but I used chat GPT to get
a lot of this information and it was actually very helpful.
So I've been using it a little bit more just to get some information about different
things and it's actually pretty good but again I don't want to sit around and
do that all day.
The things that I looked up were like the total registered podcast or indexed podcast so that's
like the total number of podcasts that actually exist and it's between 4.4 to 4.6 million
and then the active podcast so of that 4.4 to 4.6 million there's only like 0.44
to 0.7 million shows that are different platforms and stuff that are active so like maybe somewhere
around 700,000 out of 4.4 to 4.6 million only like 700,000 are active which is pretty crazy
that's a pretty small number so then I looked up like how many of those active podcasts
have episodes that have gone past 20 episodes 50 episodes and 100 episodes so what it came
back with is that there's over 20 episodes there's a few thousand to 10,000 over 50 episodes
low thousands over 100 episodes a few thousand or less and so I asked it to break it
down by percentages to see how that looks so this is taking that active number of podcasts
and how many are over 20 episodes over 50 and over 100 and so this is what it came up with
so the way that it broke it down for the percentages is that generally well under
5% of active shows have 20 plus episodes and under 1 to 2% have 100 plus episodes
so the Subian U podcast is in that 1 to 2% of all of those 700,000 ish active podcasts like that
only 1 to 2% of those have over 100 episodes and that's pretty awesome
so I think that's a pretty good accomplishment because I've been doing it for over four and a
half years and all of you listening that continue to listen that continue to share
that continue to be guests and also being able to go out to events and be a part of that
all of that is what really helps to keep me going and to keep doing this for all of you
I'm also so thankful to Subaru for bringing me out to Overland Expo because going out to those
events and getting to meet new people for the first time getting to see people that I hadn't
seen in a long time it was just it was such a great opportunity for me to be out there with
the people and get out of my closet and go do some recording in person and just get
out there in the community because you know it's it's like it's hard to be here and see like of
course we have a community here but it's like it's hard for all of us to get together because we
all have things that were going on stuff with our kids so we don't always see each other too often
and and I know we could all be better about being more intentional about it and I know some
of that part of that falls on me but I just I see so much activity in other parts of the country
where so many people are constantly getting together all the time and and so it's hard to be
here and see all of that going on out there so when I have the opportunity to go out there
and be somewhere else and be in person with people get to go hit some trails like we did
with Overland Expo in Oregon and see some cool stuff and just be out there with other people
it's I love that and that's like one of my favorite things of being part of this community and being
able to do this podcast is because of opportunities like that and I'm just extremely grateful and so
thankful for being able to get out there and see people and do some remote recording because
it's a lot of fun I love sitting with people and being able to record in person and it's great
to be able to do this podcast from my closet and be able to connect with people through Zoom
but as you all know you're chatting with people on Instagram all the time and then when you
finally get to meet them in person it's just so awesome and it's such a different dynamic
and then you get to see somebody's car in person and it just looks so different in person than
on you know the pictures or videos on Instagram and it just brings brings it all full circle
and it's just fun to be in person with all these different people so yeah it's a lot of fun
all right so getting back to the podcast metrics I asked it for active listeners in 2025
so monthly on a monthly basis in the United States there's roughly 158 million monthly
podcast listeners which that's a lot and then I also asked it because I'm looking at the
time that I've had the Subin U podcast going I asked it to look at the growth rate of listeners
and from starting from January of 2021 to September of 2025 and it said using US monthly
listeners as the most reliable comparable series it's from 116 million in January of 2021
to 158 million in 2025 so that's like a compound annual growth of 7.7 per year which is pretty good
and it'll no no doubt continue to grow some other cool data is the episode count thresholds
20 500 episodes and so like it had trouble pulling together like completely accurate data
but it did say like that different like amplify podcast news bus sprout podcast index their
summaries repeatedly note that most shows stop very early examples 44 of podcasts have less
than three episodes and they claim that shows of or shows that past three episodes many still stop
before 20 that means that shows that reach 2050 and 100 episodes are a small minority
like the Subin U podcast taking it even further with those type of numbers it says that
a large majority of feeds have very few episodes many only one to three episodes
one commonly cited heuristic is 90 percent don't pass three episodes of the remainder most don't
pass 20 and podcast index public tallies show that only a small person percentage of shows
have hundreds of episodes so it says 91 k shows with 250 plus episodes in a cited snapshot 250
plus episodes I think we're going to get there because we're going to be releasing episode 212
next Monday so it'll take us a while to get to 250 but we'll get there we're getting there
so that's 91 000 but out of 4.4 to 4.6 million so yeah that's a small number comparatively and
so that's where we are with the Subin U podcast is that very small percentage and I think that's
pretty cool because all of you listening right now are a part of that and have helped that
happen and helped us get there so thank you thank you so much as a reminder Overland Expo East in
Virginia which is the last event for this year is going to be October 3rd 4th and 5th and I will
be there I'm actually getting in on Wednesday October 1st so that I can go to the activities
and trail runs and everything that they're going to be doing on Thursday October 2nd
so I'm really really looking forward to this and I'm really excited about it and I really hope that
I get to see a lot of people there that I've seen before and I already know that I'm going to meet
a lot of new people so I'm super super excited about that so I think there's a lot of opportunities
there to get a chance to talk to a lot of people and chat with them on the mic and get some
good conversations and a good bonus episode again I'm hunting for people that don't own a
Subaru that have stumbled into the Subaru space and are curious and interested about purchasing
a Subaru and they want to learn more so hopefully we will get another one of those
people persons and we can make that happen but hope to see you there and we'll see you next
Monday on another episode and then of course after I'm done with Overland Expo I'll pull it put out a
bonus episode it's for everybody to listen to that so thanks for tuning in much to be love
Raph
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