Summary
Quarterly listener report: 41% growth in completed plays, the two episodes that drove it, where drop-off concentrates in the first ninety seconds, and four recommendations for Q4.
Q3 Audience Report — The Signal Loop
Highlights
Engagement grew faster than reachPage 1
Completed plays rose 41% quarter over quarter against 12% download growth. The audience did not get much larger, it got considerably more engaged.
Two episodes carried the quarterPage 2
Episode 38 on pricing for small teams hit a 78% completion rate. Episode 41 on remote onboarding brought the most new subscribers, nearly all from one community forum link rather than directory search.
Drop-off lives in the first ninety secondsPage 3
About one listener in five leaves inside ninety seconds. The cold-open experiment across episodes 39 to 42 reduced that to one in seven; control episodes did not move.
Q4 recommendationsPage 4
Make the cold open standard, move the sponsor read past minute eight, and publish transcripts for the whole catalogue — transcript pages drove 19% of organic arrivals from a third of the episodes.