360 - Taylor Swift Makes Podcast History With 21 Million Views and Counting

0:05 Good morning podcasting Morning Chat. Today is Thursday, August 28th, 2025, and today we're diving back into some of the most or the biggest podcasting news, including Taylor Swift's record-breaking debut on New Heights, Spotify's new in app DMS, and a whole lot more. So if you're listening live on Clubhouse, hit the share button, bottom left hand side of the screen and share it. However, Clubhouse lets you. And if you're listening via podcast, please share this episode with a fellow podcaster. And now give us about 30 seconds and we'll get things rolling. Thanks for being here. Good morning again, podcasting, Morning Chat. Thanks so much for being here.

1:24 I am your host Mark Ronik, and currently on stage with me we have producer Ashley Feller, Nick Naulback, Sid Meadows, and Dr. Fay. I was crossing my fingers this morning that Jonathan Howard would also be able to join us. Reason being, as I said at the top of the show, we're going to be talking a little bit about Taylor Swift, her appearance on New Heights. And I know Jonathan has been actively covering that appearance. And I know on his own podcast he talks a little bit about things we could learn from that. And unfortunately, I'm guessing Jonathan's not going to show up this morning.

2:07 He told me last night his intention was to be here. And unfortunately, Jonathan, one of his two dogs, passed away yesterday. Ryder. And I can only imagine. Well, I mean, I've been through it before and I can only imagine what Jonathan's going through right now. If anybody, if you've got a pet in your life, I think you have some sort of idea. It is not easy. And I don't know that I would have made it here this morning if I were in Jonathan's shoes. So wishing Jonathan all the best. And certainly I hope, I hope he leaves himself plenty of time to grieve and just want him to know that we're all here for Jonathan and maybe he'll show up as well. So we'll dig into that.

2:55 And I wanted to keep going with the news 'cause we had so many stories yesterday and we didn't get to all of them. And I know we started talking a little bit about Tay Tay, Taylor Swift. And so let's, let's just get to as many of these stories as we can and then talk about as many of them as we can together. So I'm just going to dig right in. Like I've been saying, Taylor Swift turns her first podcast appearance into a global event on the New Heights podcast. This was, if you didn't know already, this was her first ever podcast appearance, not just on New Heights, but in general. She's never done a podcast appearance before. And this in case again, you were under a rock, this interview happened I think exactly 2 weeks ago from today. So she sat down with Travis and Jason Kelsey on that hit show New Heights.

3:56 The episode was not just them shooting the ass. It was a full blown cultural moment. It broke all sorts of records and we'll talk about those records in a second. Taylor did everything from laughing about learning football from scratch, which and by the way, for I did catch most of the interview and I was very impressed for somebody who did not know a thing about football, how much she's learned. And I mean, yes, of course it helps being married to somebody in the NFL or not married, engaged to somebody in the NFL. And I'm still very impressed. She got candid about her emotional journey, reclaiming all the masters of her recordings of her, I believe, 6 albums. See, I learned a lot about Taylor and she used the platform to announce reputation.

4:52 I mean, it's hard not to be. She is an unbelievable success and for good reason. She knows what she's doing. She is not just making music and people flocking to it. It's way more than that. When we talk a lot about knowing your audience, it's sometimes starts to feel like a broken record, both us saying it to you and I'm sure you hearing us say it over and over again, and not just us. I know this is something that goes on all over the podcasting world, but Taylor proves how successful you can be when you really get your audience and when you deliver to your audience. I guess it's one thing to know your audience, it's another thing to know how to deliver what they want and she does it. One thing I really liked was they got into dealing with criticism, social media, noise, the mainstream media, and there is one line that she had brought up that she had said. She said my name can be in the actual headline and it's none of my business, which I really liked it. It goes back to one of my favorite books, the four agreements and not taking things personally. Allow people to think what they want, do what they want as long as they're not harming you or others, but allow them to say what they want to say.

6:25 It has no, it should shouldn't have any effect on us, right, because it's just an opinion. They're living in their world and we got to look at all the other people that we are serving. And if you're saying to me, well, Mark, I have a small audience, you still have an audience. And if it's three people and focus on those three people, how do we serve them? Because when we start serving them, delivering what they want, things grow. So like I said, I listened to this episode on my road trip home last week, and I really took it as a master class in how to turn a podcast appearance into a global event, despite the fact that she's Taylor Swift.

7:09 Let me talk a little bit about some of these record-breaking moments. 1.3 million concurrent viewers. In other words, at its peak during the live stream on August 13th, the episode was simultaneously watched by 1.3 million people on YouTube, which made that episode the most watched podcast on YouTube, setting a new record for the platform. And as of a day or two ago, well, I actually know as of today, it has 21 million views on YouTube. According to Google, the high demand when this was live, it crashed the system around the one hour and 44 minute mark. The episode also brought a dramatic increase to new listeners to the New Heights podcast on platforms like Spotify, with a 3000% increase in new listeners and 2500% increase in overall streams.

8:16 And I think I read somewhere that Spotify also said their female listenership went up by I think it was 600,000 new female consumers. I was going to say listeners, but I know it's you can view on there as well. Pretty crazy stuff. I'm curious, has anybody here listened to the interview? Anyone. No one guys, this is the I didn't. Listen to the episode, I caught clips here and there from it. I would be really curious, like those are some massive increase in numbers, but I'd be curious when the dust settles what the the actual increase is because a lot of people are actually like they're tuning in because it's Taylor Swift on the episode.

9:03 I have a hard time believing all of those people are going to continue tuning back into the episode every episode that they drop after that, but I'm interested to see how many people stay. That's a really good point, Nick. And, you know, and that's something that we talk about in podcasting in general. We get a big guest, maybe not as big as Taylor Swift, but we get what we consider a big guest that we know has a big following. And oftentimes they'll deliver that following for that episode. And then, yeah, then they may not show up again. Go ahead, Dr. What kind of time frame would you give it? Like in a month? Is that when you would start recalculating to see where you're at? Yeah, I would probably give it a month and you'd probably potentially, if there was a drop, you'd probably see it from week to week, right?

9:51 Like if this week was your big interview with your big guest, next week might tell the story pretty dramatically, depending on how much, how many people they delivered for that episode that they appeared on. So, yeah, I mean, I would probably give it a month or so just to see what happens because, you know, more data helps tell a tell the picture, paint the picture a little bit better. But yeah, I am shocked that, you know, listen, I would normally under other circumstances, I would normally maybe not jump and listen to that interview just because again, I'm not a Swifty and it's nothing against Taylor Swift. It's just she is not a draw for me per SE.

10:35 But when it comes to making waves in the podcasting world, I feel like as podcasters, it's almost an obligation for us to go listen because of the impact that it's had on the industry. This will make an impact on the podcasting industry, much like when Serial first came out and really put podcasting on the map. Much like when the presidential election was going on this past one and how the candidates went on different podcasts and what an impact that made. This is a big deal. Yeah, we'll look to this as like one of those landmark things and you'll hear. So, you know, it's like when, you know, Taylor Swift went on the podcast, it's, you know, it's one of those things that we will hear about for a long time. Absolutely.

11:25 I guess then what I may want to do is wait for Jonathan to return to get more into some of the things that we can learn from this, specifically with storytelling. I know Jonathan just did an episode on his podcast breaking down this whole thing, his podcast, by the way, Story Lab, breaking down really what we can learn from storytelling. And Taylor Swift and I got to tell you, she did it. I mean, they did this whole thing brilliantly because at first it did feel like more or less a casual conversation between the three of them, and it was really cool. Basically Jason, the brother of Travis.

12:09 Jason interviewed Taylor and for the most part, Taylor and Travis. Travis was really answering questions more than asking them. Do we know who sponsors who their sponsors are because they must be jumping for? Drilling. Oh, God, yeah, Yeah. And I don't know. And I wonder if this episode I have to go and look, 'cause I didn't hear any sponsors, but this apparently this was an early return for to the new season of New Heights. They were actually going to come out, I think in a week or two with their first episode of their new season. So I think this was kind of quickly orchestrated. Last minute, yeah.

12:50 She did a great job of welcoming the audience in sharing stories that her audience hadn't seen or heard before. And I think that's a big one because if I know a lot of us as podcast hosts go and guest on other shows to help promote our show or business, etcetera. And I think the the challenge is that we have to keep things fresh, right? Like if I'm going from show to show, a lot of times I'm getting the same questions because, you know, people are interviewing me about podcasting, right? And so I'm getting a lot of the same questions. The key for me when I feel like I've done a good interview is that I've shared something different than the last interview I did.

13:39 And although Taylor Swift, this was her first podcast interview, we know she's done plenty of interviews and she was sharing some very personal stories that I know publicly. She has said she normally keeps those close to the vest, but she unloaded. I mean, she was talking about things like her father's surgery when he was sick. And I mean, she was really giving the audience, I think, what they wanted. So I think that's one lesson to learn is to try to keep things fresh. Maybe a part of the lesson here is don't share everything on the first episode that you go guest on, right? Save some stories for future appearances.

14:23 Other than that, I think we're going to wait and maybe we'll dedicate a whole show to it. First, let me check in with Billy, who's joined us on stage, see if he wants to add anything to this. Go ahead, Billy. Good morning. Good morning. It's good to see everybody. I watched that whole interview. Of course I watched their show and not all the time, but more than not. And I didn't even know that she was going to be on there. Didn't watch the live, but watch the replay. And but I just think it's different, you know, it's like if you see her do an interview on like, I don't know, NBC, it doesn't have that much time. So this is probably the most for the longest, most intimate interview maybe that she's ever done, I guess being a publicly or whatever. And so I think that brings in a whole another thing to the situation.

15:10 It's not like I'm talking to this person I've never met or I've only been on a Zoom call one or two times. It's like these people are like my family, I've been hanging out with them for two years, been going to ball games and watching Jason, you know, so they had like all this. There's like a lot of back stories, lot of inside jokes, a lot of things that camaraderie that people have. You know, you listen all these comedians podcasts, they're on the road together all the time. They're they're seeing each other. They share a lot of, you know, things in common. And I think it's what we saw. We just saw the human side of, you know, Taylor Swift and being comfortable with these dudes. There's one of them and then, you know, loves the other one. I'm sure like family so I'm text. You.

15:54 Know that would not happen on any other podcast even if that wouldn't have been her quote UN quote first podcast interview. I don't think anyone else could have gotten what they got on that show a. 100% that speaks a lot to the chemistry between you and your guest. And certainly you're not going to, in most cases, as far as I'm concerned, not going to be able to create the same kind of chemistry as to now engaged people and the brother. You're not going to create that kind of chemistry. And I think, you know, it does speak to pre interviews and creating some chemistry before you get on the show. But yeah, Billy, to your point, that's one of the things that made it so special is that they were very relaxed, very comfortable, and all willing to open up and share stories. How stressed do you think her PR team was? The fact that that episode was live for I don't know how long it went over an hour, 2 hours?

16:53 Like you figure most interviews that she does for something like an NBC or whatever like just news segments are probably heavily curated and this was just a free for all. Like she could have said anything and it could have been polarizing for her community. Kind of impresses me actually. I agree with you it's it is impressive and my impression being a new Swifty Dr. my my first impression is that she runs the show. I mean, I think her PR team probably, and her whole team is probably very used to her just calling the shots and having to roll with how she does things.

17:37 She that was definitely something I learned about her is how much control she has over everything. And I think that's why it was so important to her, that whole story of her getting back the rights, owning her music that she wrote over the course of her the first six albums. She was still very calculated. I mean, she was a pretty savvy person. So she was, even though she was telling those stories, she's very calculated. I would like to hear the stories that we didn't hear. It would be fun Yeah, me too and for example, one story we didn't hear is the engagement. And yes you might be saying to be but Mark, they just announced their engagement yesterday so why would they have announced it on the show 2 weeks ago Well, I heard some news that the that her I think it came from her father or maybe Travis. No, Sir.

18:29 Travis Kelsey's father, Pardon me. This story was that he got a phone call from them telling him about their engagement on August 10th. So they were keeping this quiet and I guess they didn't want to make the announcement on the show and they waited to post it publicly yesterday on Instagram, which I think by the way, that one, that post of Taylor Swift's of announcing their engagement, that one I believe also broke records. I looked last night and that announcement alone had, I believe, 31 million. Let me see. No, now it's up to almost 33 million likes alone. 33 million likes. Which also speaks to the fact that you just said, hold back some of your stories, wait for, you know, wait for the right moment to to drop them.

19:24 I agree with you. That's a really good strategy and I wonder how it would have worked or if it would have mattered in their case. But I wonder how it would have worked if they did the engagement announcement first and then she did the appearance. I almost feel like that would have broken more records. It would have been a bigger record-breaking moment because then people would want to tune in to hear them talk to Cher about the engagement. So maybe the strategy there was that they didn't want to distract. I don't know. I think a big part of it though, was the announcement of her album, and I think the engagement would have distracted from that, which I think wouldn't have been fair to them as an engaged couple now. And I feel like it would have taken away from something that should have been special for one reason and ruined something special.

20:16 That was also happy. Yeah, and. I I think again it was a calculated move. Yeah, that's a great point. Thank you for calling it out, Nick, because, yeah, that it's another lesson for us as creators. You don't want to drop too many big announcements on in one piece of content, whether it's a podcast or otherwise, because it does dilute those announcements. If you're throwing out this big announcement, that big announcement, they get diluted again. Calculated strategy that she decided. That's where I'll announce the album and I'm not going to announce the engagement as well. You know, I'm thinking out loud.

20:59 And I still think had they done it the other way, it would have been worked. But look, Taylor Swift is a genius. So I'm not going to question Taylor Swift and and that strategy and I do think it was very calculated. Matt Bliss is on stage. Matt, did you want to add to any of this? Sorry, just finishing a bite. Sorry about that, Matt. The important note that I think and look, I'm going to be Deborah Downer here. I'm going to be the one looking at this and going, no, that's not right. This is right, but that's. What we found on you for That's right. Good stuff. Stage is set, let's go. So celebrity podcasts, people who control a statistically large amount of media attention, I think means that whatever we take away from Taylor Swift literally doing anything. Like I remember the talk about her coming to do a gig in Dublin and Dublin literally experiencing a low Richter scale earthquake because the stadium, she was having everybody jump up and down in the stadium.

22:13 You say literally did really like that really happened? Yes. Wow. OK, Yeah. But literally. I mean, literally. Yeah, Like, really like. Like how we just throw that around all the time, Yeah. The literal impact of her presence in a single place created a seismic event. Yeah, it happens everywhere. And there's a reason that at the very end of the last episode yesterday, I mentioned the astronomer CEO at the Coldplay concert, because that was jumped on as a big media opportunity for everybody to share their whatever revelation they have as a result of someone potentially cheating on his wife being caught at a concert and all of the threads being unraveled there. Here we have everybody talking about Taylor Swift's impact on the podcast industry, potentially happening around the same time as a bunch of people with jobs in podcasting get redistributed in one of the biggest companies on the planet. I think of this and wonder what to take away from it. And I think of it in the same way as I think of Steven Bartlett on Diary of his CEO, like millions of dollars a year, millions of views a year.

23:26 It's very easy when one aspect of what's required for what would otherwise be described as success for something like this, you have an infinite supply of. Stephen Bartlett was a extremely successful multi exit entrepreneur before he got to the stage his podcast is AT. And when you've got an infinite pool of money, you can have a team of 70 people helping you refine the details of your podcast. Taylor Swift has fan podcasts, forum threads, news stories come out from Ticketek and Ticketmaster every time she runs a concert because everybody can't get tickets or the threshold of the Internet can't sustain itself under the weight of her presence. That kind of presence for a podcast is massive and we have to think about what the overall impact of that would be for what is it new heights for the Kelsey brothers on this podcast? Are they going to see similar to the Samsung TV glitch blip that we all saw a few years ago when it counted as a play when Samsung televisions would preview the podcast on their distribution service receiving the RSS feed? We all wonder, oh man, I've made it. And then we realize everyone else has made it and it has very little impact.

24:45 Or maybe iOS 17 decides to switch off autoplay or auto download for all podcasts for users, and we realized the downloads didn't mean as much as we thought. All this is to say that I think we need to think about how this came about and the result of it with more than just a few grains of salt, just to realize that celebrities have a different approach to it. And there's absolutely a reason why Alexandfilippo puts his report together on Podmatch and tries to extract the data that is not indie, that is not from podcasts that aren't celebrity, to separate them so that they're not skewed. Because it already has a problem with the top 1% being so far away from the rest of the population and podcasting being an accessible platform to be sustained by all. I'll be doing an episode on it at some point in the future. But the idea that people come in wanting to be Stephen Bartlett's and Joe Rogan's, they have such a long way to go, but they make it look so easy.

25:52 It's the same with Taylor Swift. Like Mark, if you were getting engaged next week, or if you were, you know, you, you got a week long set of experiences and learnings and revelations and you wanted to go on a marketing campaign for this podcast. Would you slowly tell little bits of that week long transformative journey and save pieces for other podcasts to create a like an ongoing sort of narrative through all these podcast shows? Maybe not. Maybe not. I mean, everybody's a little bit different. Yeah, specifically if it were like an engagement for me, no, I probably wouldn't use that as a strategy to promote my podcast, even even sprinkling it, you know, over the course of a week, like you were saying, I don't know that I would do that. But if I had a big announcement that was very relatable to for to to my audience of interest to them, I might follow a strategy similar is.

26:54 Is that fair to say? Does that make sense? Yeah, absolutely. I just shook another mouthful of Apple. There's somewhere in the middle that works for a strategy for. Sorry for whoever's editing this is. Sorry, Ashley. For whoever's taking an approach like this, like a media campaign to slowly distribute things across the course of whatever they're doing. Like you can imagine a Brené Brown probably wanting to do something like that. You know, someone with, I don't even know. I can't pretend that I can backseat PR campaign people. I don't have that experience. But do you know what I mean? Like that we just got to overcorrect all this LinkedIn stuff. We see how, you know, it changes, changed podcasting. It legitimizes podcasting as a platform because Taylor Swift was on it, legitimized it for about a week, and then they got engaged and it gives you a little spike again. I'm sure they spoke to their media teams about when to release that.

27:50 Yeah. Yeah, It's just, you know, we have to take the salt. We all need salt. It's electrolytes, keeps us hydrated. Salt's important. So, so then I appreciate that. Don't take another bite yet. This is more of an anomaly. This isn't anything or this doesn't have much to provide us as far as the learning moments as far as impact on the industry. It and if I am accurate with that summary, if success leaves clues, do we want to learn more from a Taylor Swift and her rise to fame as opposed to learning more from the success of this particular guest appearance?

28:33 This is the part where that you can't put in a LinkedIn post and say, follow this growth hack to be the next big Taylor Swift. A lot of people who get to the stage they are, and this is something that's in podcasting too, is that it takes a lot of time. It takes time. It takes takes the right set of circumstances to come about and every circumstance is different. We can't always infer where they are now based on the journey they took. I would urge everyone who's thinking about what the what this means for podcasting going forward and the things that they can take away straight away for this to be applicable to their own situation to take it one step further.

29:16 Just bring it to that higher level again and say, if in five years I was going to be Taylor Swift levels of fame in podcasting, what does that look like? How did Taylor get to where she is now? How does that equate to my journey? And if it doesn't, what are the steps that I need to take to be able to get there? And then who's the Kelsey Brothers for me? Do I get engaged to someone? Do I make a Ryan Reynolds fan cast, Become his best friend after five years of doing reviews of all of his films and becoming a stakeholder in a Welsh football club and then end up where you want to be? Reflection is important.

29:59 Realizing your own journey and where it's going to go is important. I think, again, the astronomer CEO thing, I think the memory is too short and people don't see far enough into the future to be able to. I'm not giving people enough credit here, but you know what I'm saying? Like, think about the questions that could take you to your Taylor Swift moment and plan out that journey. Set small goals for yourself and then see how it all lines up. I wouldn't say go on your boyfriend's podcast, see if that does the job. And then you know if when you don't pull your audience back and forth, reflection, think forward, plan for a long road and reflect on the lessons from Taylor from more than a surface level and apply them to yourself individually.

30:47 By the way, no one can do this for you. It's important for you to understand your own experience and then apply those lessons yourself. Thank you, Matt. I appreciate you breaking that down. And I think that there's kind of a, well, look, I don't think we are on separate sides of the coin because I think we've said some things that are the same. And I still feel, and I think we've proven earlier, there are some things we can learn from the approach, from the appearance itself. There are some strategies we could learn from. And I think we pointed out a few already this morning. But I do completely track with you that, you know, we have to take it somewhat with a grain of salt too, because we are talking about probably the most popular pop culture figure on Earth currently, if not ever.

31:38 We got to keep it in perspective. Let me go to Nick because I know Nick's been waiting and we also have Renee on stage and I'm anxious to hear what Renee has to say as well. So let me check in with Nick. I have two quick points that hearing Matthew talk kind of got me thinking a little bit. One, that that slow drip of content or slow drip of information strategy, I do feel plays really well into her hand because of the fact that people are watching her every. If you were to use the same strategy and share key pieces of information relevant to you and what you're doing, and you drip that across several weeks, there's going to be a good chunk of people listening that are going to miss huge pieces of information that you shared two weeks ago and are not sharing this week or vice versa.

32:33 You know what I mean? If people aren't going to be following you everywhere you go and be like, Oh my gosh, did you see Mark just came out with another. He just appeared on another episode. We have to go listen to it right now. She has that factor that it doesn't matter what she does, people are going to tune in, they're going to follow her, they're going to find her. They're going to do whatever they can to hear what she has to say. I think that that plays into that strategy really well now. No, I lost the other. Point. That I wanted to make. Do you want us to come back to you? Yeah, yeah. Come back to. Me. OK, Thank you, Nick. Let me go to Renee. Renee, good morning. What did you want to add to this conversation? Just wanted to add, as a wedding professional for the last 36 years, we own her now just so everybody knows she's ours. What do you mean?

33:25 She's US royalty, right? And when a royal wedding happens over in United Kingdom, the wedding world owns that wedding and everything about it. Trends are going to be created. The rest of our destiny for planning weddings is being shaped by this wedding in no way that we've ever seen it before. So where if she comes with a collar? If she comes with a turtleneck long sleeved Lacey overlay over her dress, everybody's going to do that. She is going to inspire all the looks that are going to trend to that. If she goes strapless, then strapless will come back. Everything is going to change with the dress with the way everything to the all the details that can be found about the ceremony and the reception will all lead us into the future.

34:17 So to hack the system, everybody's going to want that has podcasts are going to want to be putting Taylor Swift into their keywords and be talking about it somehow. As soon as that happened, our destinies, everybody's on hold. What am I ordering? Like if you were going to be ordering, if you were in the rental business and you rented items like chargers and you were just going to place an order, you might not be placing that order now because you don't know if you've chosen the way Taylor's choosing. So you're not going to stock up on things until you know what direction Taylor's going. And we might not get one slip of anything until the wedding happens. So that's just everybody just talking about Taylor. Prognostic. What's that word?

34:59 I can't even think of it right now. Prognostic. Thank you. That word, that word insert, you know, wondering what's going on and and wondering what's going to happen. So yeah, everybody's going to be adding it to their podcast discussions if they haven't already. It's going to pop up all over there. Taylor's wedding, you know, wondering what's going on and saying and if anything slips, that will just give us so much more fuel to talk about and everybody will talk about it. But yeah, we, she's ours now. The wedding industry, we get to keep her. And so that's how it's going to be in the podcast world. I am very grateful and appreciative that you're on stage, Renee, because of what you do and because you were able to kind of make that comparison as far as just the kind of impact that she has.

35:48 We're sitting here talking about podcasting and yeah, I can see that impact that will make on the wedding industry as well. Nick, do you remember what you were going to say? Yes, Renee helped bring it back. Nice. So thank you, Renee. Also trying to pay attention and drive strategy out of the New Heights podcast episode and the records they broke and how can we emulate that into our own show? I don't think that's the right way to look at it. I think as independent podcasters, which I'm assuming a less less than audience than Taylor Swift has. I'm not saying that. I'm just saying assuming that I think we have to look at what other shows are seeing success as a result.

36:34 But how are they capitalizing on this massive event and building a strategy around that? Like we need to be watching outside and see what podcasters like. I'm thinking of Jonathan's episode where he kind of breaks down the Taylor Swift stuff and our other podcasters relating that into their content. Kind of like Renee said, using Taylor Swift in the the SEO keywords. What strategies are they deploying into their shows to take advantage of the situation? I think that is more what we as independent podcasters need to be paying attention to. That makes a ton of sense. Go ahead, Dr. Number one, as Renee was talking, I wanted to say, Can you imagine who gets the television rights and how much they have to pay for those, the rights to televise that wedding?

37:24 They're not going to televise it, no way, because Taylor Swift is so private. Personally. Normally. I bet you they're going to have a tiny little ceremony with just family but then they're going to have a big Hoo. Hah that's what I'm thinking. But you know what in in the comments Dave Campbell says was the New Heights audience the best target audience for this appearance? Or would Kylie Kelsey's show be like more interested audience in all things Taylor? An AB test between two shows with her on them would be an interesting comparison. I absolutely agree. That is a great comment Dave, and clearly it worked pretty well-being that it actually broke records.

38:10 But yes, as far as the long term goes, it could have been more beneficial to. I forgot her name again. The Kelsey. Kelsey So what is her show about? Is it like everything girly? Because if it is, I can see in my head, Taylor being on that show talking about the arrangements for the wedding. You know, what are you going to do for the dress? What are you going to do for the flowers? And using that as the AB test. But I don't know Kylie's, Kylie's show. So I don't know what it what it's about. I don't either, and I believe her target audience does skew a little more female than new Heights. Maybe this is part of their strategy. Maybe that will be and and maybe they get more into the wedding details.

39:03 I think New Heights has more of the right audience for a Taylor Swift appearance then we might be giving them credit for. Because we all here know this is bit that the Taylor and Travis thing has been a thing now for a couple of years. And much like the Kansas City Chiefs has brought in a whole new audience of young girls because of Taylor Swift and Travis's relationship, I think the same has happened with New Heights as well. They've managed to capture some of Taylor's audience regularly. Like I think that those that her fans do show up. And let's be clear, her fans aren't obviously just little girls, right?

39:48 The moms, the dads, there are lots of people of all ages and all genders and gender identities. Can I ask a stupid? Question do both players play on the same team? Do both brothers? They did not. They did not. In in fact the in the Super Bowl. Oh, is 11 not playing now? One retired. Yep. Jason retired and he was on the Eagles and Travis Kelce on the Chiefs and they actually played against each other in a Super Bowl recently. Speaking of. Football Did anybody? See the. Meme that's going around showing the close up of her ring and it said, did you see the details of this ring? And then you go close up on it and really small print it says. And to think the Eagles were up 40 to 6 in the Super Bowl. As if he engraved that on the.

40:42 Ring. Hilarious. I have not seen that meme, but now I'm probably it'll be popping up left and right now that you say it. All right, well listen, we have about 15 minutes left and I know we were going to cover a lot of other news. I want to see though we've spent 45 minutes or so talking about Taylor Swift. It feels weird to just completely shift gears. Does anyone else want to add anything to this part of the conversation as far as Taylor Swift's record-breaking appearance? OK, well, go ahead, dear. Well, so OK. Janae says we keep talking about what they did right now, but what about looking at the larger strategy on how they got here in the 1st place? Yeah.

41:28 And yeah. And Nick says I think that's a massive part of her whole strategy. Her fans can go crazy on theories and stories that only they themselves have made-up. So that's true, too. Yeah. And that's. Something I was saying too with when Matt was sharing. And yet that maybe the strategy is, is if we see something super successful, yeah, we want to learn about that appearance or that thing first and how why was it successful? What can we learn from it? But I think then the the bigger strategy for a lot of us independent creators is to learn more about these people and their their rise to fame.

42:12 Go ahead, Renee, to answer Janae's. Question I can speak about Taylor Swift is let's let's just break it down to how simple it was. How did we first all hear about Taylor Swift? Those of us that are older is that people were making fun of her singing about breakups, but when she was singing about all her breakups and calling guys out for what they did, she made herself relatable to everybody else that had a breakup, which is the entire every single female probably that was of her age group that she was trying to attract and even older older young ladies at that time. And so how did she do it, to answer Janae's question, is that she had to stand out.

42:55 If she just sang about all the other bubble gum songs that everybody else did, she would have just been one of them. But she did something that she felt led to do, or it was calculated. No one knows. But she was singing about breakups. Everybody was able to relate to her. They latched on to her that this is one of ours, This Is Us. I mean, she's a Pennsylvania girl. She's from somewhere like maybe 30 minutes from me. And then she moved to Nashville early on. Well, I was about to say Nashville is. Claiming her as well, so yeah, well, well, so. So the newspapers around here say an Ohio boy proposes to a Pennsylvania girl. So that's how So different states are claiming them, of course.

43:36 But I think the answer is she was relatable. Yes, I just put that. In the chat, Renee, I just said because Renee said she's being authentic, yes. And relatable. Yeah. Did you want to finish? I didn't mean to interrupt you. No, no, no. That. That's fine. That that puts a cherry on it, OK. Yeah. And that's a huge lesson for all of us is making ourselves more relatable. This is something I think I said this very week, right? We can all do shows and regurgitate information, insights, share our path to success, etcetera. And that is going to help some people. Absolutely. I think when you're trying to grow and build an audience, it's about being relatable and being able to share not just your successes, your failures. And I guess loosely defined, yeah, what Taylor was doing with her music was her failed.

44:31 She was singing about her failed relationships. And that is what gets people going. That's what gets people feeling like, oh, yeah, I know how that feels. I get it. And then they're they they're they feel seen and then they want to continue that feeling and they'll keep coming back. Jeff, good morning. Welcome to the stage. What did you want to add? And belated happy birthday to you. Thank you Is the wind. Affecting my sound 'cause I can I can jump off. No, you sound OK. It sounds. OK, so far you're my new walking. Thing in the morning which screws me up on my you and you and Sid are are. Virtually walking together in the mornings. Why we do the show 1st? I just want to go on record. For all music that Taylor Swift did not invent, writing songs about breakups?

45:16 Yeah. Agreed. Agreed. Go to a Chicago concert. If you want. And part of my reaction is that there's really nothing to learn specifically from the moment because it's such a phenomenon that it's I mean, she's like Beatles level, you know, and that was 50 years ago The Beatles. But I think the one thing that she has that generates the numbers didn't matter which podcast she was on was just her community. Like 3/4 of my household was waiting there to watch that live on YouTube. And it's like, you know, every my family text goes crazy. There's other countdown, there's another countdown. You know, my kid has bought 2 variances of the same album that hasn't even come out yet.

46:03 So it's like, yeah, but it's at the Swifties. It's that community I think that caused the earthquake that was mentioned earlier and all that kind of stuff. It's that rapid fan base that I think is just incredible that she's built up. That's so you're in the camp of there's, there's. Nothing to learn. I'm not saying there's nothing. To learn there's stuff on her whole journey. It's not like she would discover it out of nowhere. I mean, but she took advantage and I think she's super talented and super great at business and everything. You know, my kids have bought 2 versions of every one of her albums, you know, so I mean concerts, you know, so I, I think she's amazing. So I'm sure from a business standpoint, there's a lot, I don't think she's saved podcasts.

46:47 There's been a lot more famous people on podcasts and Taylor Swift are equally famous, you know, in the, but you know, sorry, walking and talking. I'm not used to doing that. But I think, I think community is the thing. Yeah, I think. Community is the thing. And I see Matt Bliss in in the chat says humans love buying stuff when it gives, when it gives them the feeling of community and scarcity. And yeah, I mean, that's just it. That kind of speaks to what you're saying too. When you when you have a community, they're going to support you no matter what, right? Especially one like the one that she's built of just rabid fans, people who just can't get enough of what she does. Matt, I'm going to give you the final word because I see you in the chat.

47:33 Is there anything else you want to add to this out loud for the the listening audience? I've finished my Apple. Good, it was delicious. Good. What kind of apple? Oh, that's a good question, Pink Lady. Oh, good, good choice, good choice. Big fan, used to be a Golden Delicious. But they're hard to come by. Exactly. Yeah. But but when I can get them, I will choose a golden delicious over a pink lady. Oh, listen. You, you guys, America, you got crazy apples. There's something called the Cosmic Crisp that I became aware of. It's like cosmic something mixed with a Honey Crisp. I don't even know. Anyway, I feel like I need to be the villain sometimes to balance these things. Sounds like some people think a little bit about Taylor Swift in the same way.

48:15 But there is definitely stuff to take away, and the one thing that I want to charm in with the end there is that the authenticity of her journey so far is kind of the backwards step of what most people do. They feel like they need to growth, hack their way to the point where they can be authentic. But perhaps the one thing we can learn for ourselves, not just in podcasting, but generally, is that if we are ourselves authentically most of the way through, perhaps with a bitter strategy on top, who knows, Then we're setting ourselves up for success in however long it takes for us to get to our Kelsey Brothers podcast interview. Thank you, Matt. I'm. Glad I went to you to to wrap us up.

48:56 That is a great way to wrap up and it I like the I don't want to call it full circle moment, but I like the contrast you you came in relatively hot about, you know, the on the other side of the fence. And then you shared some some a different perspective and I believe the late. Stage millennials call that negging. But I try to make sure that at least I'm truthful to my to myself, and I do it for a reason. Absolutely. Yeah, we appreciate you good message at the end. Yes, everyone do your thing indeed. So we didn't get. To all the news stories I wanted to get to today and that's fine. I wasn't sure how long that this conversation would go and I'm really glad we took a whole show to talk it through because like I said at the beginning, this is a big deal regardless of of the how and the why. It's a well, not the why, because the why is this is a big deal.

49:49 She she, she has put podcasting on the maps again, right? It like we're she's making a, a statement for podcasting that it can be successful. And yes, of course, it's the Taylor Swift influence that did that did so much for this. But it's still something that puts us on the map. It's still something that gets more people interested in podcasting. I read you those stats earlier. Spotify sky rocketed in new listeners. YouTube had its biggest podcast live stream ever, right? So more people are getting exposed to podcasting and that does trickle down. It's not going to get you twenty 30 million views on YouTube, but little by little these types of events make an impact. OK, we are back tomorrow and tomorrow I want to talk a little bit.

50:48 I got a message from one of my clients that started guesting on podcasts cause I've been encouraging them to help them grow is to be a guest on podcast and they just started and they're using pod match to do it. And yesterday he told me that he did the first appearance at the end of the show. He asked about when it would go live, when it would publish, and he was told not until April, which blew him away. But there's more to the story that has to do with a monetization strategy that might rub some of you the wrong way. So we'll talk about it tomorrow on the show. And then of course, we will share our wins from this past week.

51:36 So bring it tomorrow. Any success that you've had, big or small, we don't care the size, we don't judge the size. We don't want you to do that either. If you got out of bed this week every day and that's your win, go for it. Come share that with us. If you've launched a podcast, go for it. Come share that with us. We want to share our wins, celebrate. And because it's important to stop and smell the roses, no matter how big or small you think that they are. So until tomorrow, 7:00 AM Eastern. Make it a great day everybody, take care.