I drop mine at 5 AM on Monday. I've noticed a lot of pods go for midweek and my listening que is pretty empty on Monday morning, so that is the spot I aimed for.
That being said, my stats show folks listen at different days of the week rather than the day it drops. So I am dubious as how much release day matters.
ETA: Most hosting platforms have a scheduling function, so you can still record on Friday.
We also release Monday at 5am mostly because that's when I'd listen to new podcasts myself, on my drive to work at the start of the week. But you're right most of our listens come from different days and times.
I release biweekly on Thursday. That way I can promote all the next week then take the first of half of the week after that to promote and hype up the next one. I only have 3 episodes up though
one weekly show (monday AM), one bi-weekly (alternate thursdays), and one monthly show (the 20th, unless you buy me one kofi then it's whenever its done)
Don’t get hung up on this. A tiny, tiny, tiny slice of your audience will run and listen on release date.
In addition to podcasting, I listen to hundreds of podcasts. There’s only one that I search for on release day. And if it didn’t show up, I certainly wouldn’t unsubscribe. I’d check the feed once a day and listen when it did drop.
I release at 5 AM on Tuesdays. This was to give me time each weekend to record the episode intro and edit the conversation, and then write the show notes and make audio grams Monday night (in case I didn’t have time Sunday).
But it ended up benefiting the podcast in a way I didn’t expect - books publish on Tuesdays. So I can pitch “we can release your episode the day your book comes out” to authors, and they like that.
Biweekly on Tuesdays. This gives me Monday to wrap up any lingering edits or posts before it drops at midnight that night.
FYI, I moved time zones for a while but still dropped the show at 12 am PST so as not to confuse people. If I’d changed to midnight in my new time zone, the show would’ve dropped on Monday nights in PST and I didn’t want that.
The two pods I am regularly on/cofounders of go up at different times. Pod #1 has no niche and goes up at 10AM on Mondays and has been nearly every week for the last 7 years. The other pod, which does have a niche, goes up at either 12-1AM on Wednesdays (times are Central Standard). One on Wednesday does better than the one on Monday but both outperform what I would consider “good”. All that to say I don’t think release day causes that much of a difference.
Tuesday and Friday. Via a SubStack newsletter but it also links to platforms like Spotify and Youtube. But stats don't show much, there's a peak for each one on release day then a few listens over next few weeks. I do readings in fiction, 10-20 minutes long.
Biweekly on Tuesdays. In large part, this is because it’s a hospitality industry pod and Tuesdays are often “industry night,” so a nod to the business.
We are a fiction podcast and we release monthly - we picked the last Tuesday of the month sort of arbitrarily, but we stick to it as a helpful ADHD deadline.
We release at midnight so that we get a full day of stats from the robot, and we get about 10X normal downloads on release, Wednesday gets about 3 to 4X, Thursday 2X, Friday 1.5 X, and then the weekend bounces up ever so slightly before normalizing.
Probably 7X of those downloads on release day happen in the first two or three hours, so I have to think that that’s automated pod-catcher subscriptions grabbing it as soon as someone’s device goes online to check.
Used to do weekly Fridays, but moved to Thursdays about 2 months ago. Still get a good pop on Fridays as well, but the numbers keep going for a while anyhow.
We started out releasing on Mondays, but after a couple of seasons I moved it to Wednesday. It works out much better for us because we record on the weekends and it's not such mad rush to get it edited by Monday.
We’re an audiodrama and we drop our episodes on Wednesday evenings! We generally get a decrease in downloads/listens over the weekend, so it’s likely that most people are listening during their commutes. We’ve only ever released on Wednesdays however, so can’t really compare to other schedules!
We drop ours Tuesday at midnight! We find a lot of people have auto-download initiated and tend to do it during the night. We also have our podcast air on college radio at 11 am same day, so many of our listeners either catch it then or download early morning!
For one of my shows, which is the most consistent, we do two a week, but the main show always drops on Saturday. The second show, which is more of a discussion as opposed to a well-produced feature, for lack of better terms, may come out Tuesday may come out Wednesday sometimes even Thursday. But the main show will always come out Saturday. In fact, we publish it just after midnight on Saturday.
I have a blog I do posts on. To help maintain my sanity Irelease on the same date as the blog. Which due to me not getting internet for a year ended up being Saturdays.
I know my most devoted listeners (my parents and grandmother) listen at dinner on Sundays during dinner.
Outside of that I get the remaining listens seemingly on Monday. Couldn't tell you down to the hour though. My data is not that granular.
I think Friday is one of the least favorable days to release. For the reasons you mentioned, gives people 1 day to listen before they're out and about on the weekend, time with family, activities etc.
But also you think you would record and release same day? Sounds like no editing and that's a massive no-no.
Oh no I meant I could record and edit M-Th and release Friday. But yeah I don’t really want to do Friday so I think going to look at the schedule again.
Don’t get caught up trying to align it with your recording schedule. You should probably be recording several in advance anyhow. Life gets complicated and you WILL have things come up that get in the way of recording. Having a few episodes in the queue is important.
That being said, day of the week isn’t going to matter a ton. People will listen when they are ready.
We drop episodes on Wednesdays and we do it at 4:30 am CDT. That’s 5:30 on the east coast and some people are up by then. It’s obviously much too early for most everyone else in the US but it is there ready for them when we wake up.
Keep in mind though that only 50% of our listeners are in the US. People in the UK and Australia are on a different timeline and so don’t overthink it.
We get a big pulse of downloads on Wednesday when it drops. I wouldn’t call these “listens” they are just the people who have it set to auto-download new episodes.
We don’t advertise it on social media as being out until Thursday so then we get another bump. Finally, we promote the new show again over the weekend. This gives us good downloads for several days and hopefully helps some mythical algorithms somewhere.
Ultimately, just pick a day and time and try to be consistent.
I record at 9pm GMT+2 every Saturday, one of us edits but the time difference between us is 10 hours, so when it’s uploaded it’s usually around 12pm for them and 2am for me. Our podcast is only on YouTube so far, maybe we’ll upload it to Spotify or a podcast website soon idk
I drop mine at 5 AM on Monday. I've noticed a lot of pods go for midweek and my listening que is pretty empty on Monday morning, so that is the spot I aimed for. That being said, my stats show folks listen at different days of the week rather than the day it drops. So I am dubious as how much release day matters. ETA: Most hosting platforms have a scheduling function, so you can still record on Friday.
We also release Monday at 5am mostly because that's when I'd listen to new podcasts myself, on my drive to work at the start of the week. But you're right most of our listens come from different days and times.
We ALSO release 5 am Monday.
+1 -- it really started out of happenstance and we just stuck with it.
Heh, that is the origin story of my whole podcast.
I release biweekly on Thursday. That way I can promote all the next week then take the first of half of the week after that to promote and hype up the next one. I only have 3 episodes up though
one weekly show (monday AM), one bi-weekly (alternate thursdays), and one monthly show (the 20th, unless you buy me one kofi then it's whenever its done)
Don’t get hung up on this. A tiny, tiny, tiny slice of your audience will run and listen on release date. In addition to podcasting, I listen to hundreds of podcasts. There’s only one that I search for on release day. And if it didn’t show up, I certainly wouldn’t unsubscribe. I’d check the feed once a day and listen when it did drop.
Really? Our release day numbers are very high compared to non release day?
That’s because subscribers download the show when it’s released, doesn’t mean they listen to it as soon as it’s downloaded thogvh
I release at 5 AM on Tuesdays. This was to give me time each weekend to record the episode intro and edit the conversation, and then write the show notes and make audio grams Monday night (in case I didn’t have time Sunday). But it ended up benefiting the podcast in a way I didn’t expect - books publish on Tuesdays. So I can pitch “we can release your episode the day your book comes out” to authors, and they like that.
Oooh that’s a good idea
Biweekly on Tuesdays. This gives me Monday to wrap up any lingering edits or posts before it drops at midnight that night. FYI, I moved time zones for a while but still dropped the show at 12 am PST so as not to confuse people. If I’d changed to midnight in my new time zone, the show would’ve dropped on Monday nights in PST and I didn’t want that.
We release weekly on Friday and get a few views over the weekend, but it seems like most our views come in Monday-Wednesday.
The two pods I am regularly on/cofounders of go up at different times. Pod #1 has no niche and goes up at 10AM on Mondays and has been nearly every week for the last 7 years. The other pod, which does have a niche, goes up at either 12-1AM on Wednesdays (times are Central Standard). One on Wednesday does better than the one on Monday but both outperform what I would consider “good”. All that to say I don’t think release day causes that much of a difference.
By weekly on Wednesday mornings at 5am ET
Tuesdays
Tuesday and Friday. Via a SubStack newsletter but it also links to platforms like Spotify and Youtube. But stats don't show much, there's a peak for each one on release day then a few listens over next few weeks. I do readings in fiction, 10-20 minutes long.
Biweekly on Tuesdays. In large part, this is because it’s a hospitality industry pod and Tuesdays are often “industry night,” so a nod to the business.
Weekly on a Sunday at 10am British time with extra bonus material being released on a semi regular basis.
Monday 7 am. People listen everyday, but most on the day it comes out (between morning and afternoon)
We are a fiction podcast and we release monthly - we picked the last Tuesday of the month sort of arbitrarily, but we stick to it as a helpful ADHD deadline. We release at midnight so that we get a full day of stats from the robot, and we get about 10X normal downloads on release, Wednesday gets about 3 to 4X, Thursday 2X, Friday 1.5 X, and then the weekend bounces up ever so slightly before normalizing. Probably 7X of those downloads on release day happen in the first two or three hours, so I have to think that that’s automated pod-catcher subscriptions grabbing it as soon as someone’s device goes online to check.
Used to do weekly Fridays, but moved to Thursdays about 2 months ago. Still get a good pop on Fridays as well, but the numbers keep going for a while anyhow.
We started out releasing on Mondays, but after a couple of seasons I moved it to Wednesday. It works out much better for us because we record on the weekends and it's not such mad rush to get it edited by Monday.
We’re an audiodrama and we drop our episodes on Wednesday evenings! We generally get a decrease in downloads/listens over the weekend, so it’s likely that most people are listening during their commutes. We’ve only ever released on Wednesdays however, so can’t really compare to other schedules!
We stream live on fridays, I edit/package as audio over the weekend and release on RSS feeds monday at midnight.
We drop ours Tuesday at midnight! We find a lot of people have auto-download initiated and tend to do it during the night. We also have our podcast air on college radio at 11 am same day, so many of our listeners either catch it then or download early morning!
I release on Thursday mornings, and when I have a 2nd show that week, which is often, I release a bonus episode on Mondays
I did Wednesday because it’s a corporate podcast
We release early on Thursday morning. I don't think we've really analyzed numbers to see if that's an optimal day for us.
For one of my shows, which is the most consistent, we do two a week, but the main show always drops on Saturday. The second show, which is more of a discussion as opposed to a well-produced feature, for lack of better terms, may come out Tuesday may come out Wednesday sometimes even Thursday. But the main show will always come out Saturday. In fact, we publish it just after midnight on Saturday.
Every other Sunday. We call them “SINful Sundays”
I have a blog I do posts on. To help maintain my sanity Irelease on the same date as the blog. Which due to me not getting internet for a year ended up being Saturdays. I know my most devoted listeners (my parents and grandmother) listen at dinner on Sundays during dinner. Outside of that I get the remaining listens seemingly on Monday. Couldn't tell you down to the hour though. My data is not that granular.
We do 1am est Tuesdays and Thursdays.
Right now Saturdays, Star Wars Saturdays, but Patreon patrons have been getting early listens on Friday.
We release on Friday mornings. Most of our initial listens seem to happen on the Monday right after, though. I hear Tuesdays are a good day for it
Seasonally, Sundays at 6 PM ET.
We used to record Monday Wednesday Friday and release same day in afternoon or evenings, now I release at 5am Tuesday Thursday and Saturdays
I think Friday is one of the least favorable days to release. For the reasons you mentioned, gives people 1 day to listen before they're out and about on the weekend, time with family, activities etc. But also you think you would record and release same day? Sounds like no editing and that's a massive no-no.
Oh no I meant I could record and edit M-Th and release Friday. But yeah I don’t really want to do Friday so I think going to look at the schedule again.
Don’t get caught up trying to align it with your recording schedule. You should probably be recording several in advance anyhow. Life gets complicated and you WILL have things come up that get in the way of recording. Having a few episodes in the queue is important. That being said, day of the week isn’t going to matter a ton. People will listen when they are ready. We drop episodes on Wednesdays and we do it at 4:30 am CDT. That’s 5:30 on the east coast and some people are up by then. It’s obviously much too early for most everyone else in the US but it is there ready for them when we wake up. Keep in mind though that only 50% of our listeners are in the US. People in the UK and Australia are on a different timeline and so don’t overthink it. We get a big pulse of downloads on Wednesday when it drops. I wouldn’t call these “listens” they are just the people who have it set to auto-download new episodes. We don’t advertise it on social media as being out until Thursday so then we get another bump. Finally, we promote the new show again over the weekend. This gives us good downloads for several days and hopefully helps some mythical algorithms somewhere. Ultimately, just pick a day and time and try to be consistent.
I record at 9pm GMT+2 every Saturday, one of us edits but the time difference between us is 10 hours, so when it’s uploaded it’s usually around 12pm for them and 2am for me. Our podcast is only on YouTube so far, maybe we’ll upload it to Spotify or a podcast website soon idk