Our Year End Round-Up...Do Numbers Matter?

IsPopularTheSameAs
GoodVille


You may have noticed that I've been paying a little attention to numbers lately.

Specifically, I've been watching the total number of listens to the Advent Jukebox climb, day-by-day, over the past month.

Which, as they now are now approaching 75,000, completely flummoxes me.

But, really, what does such a number actually mean?

Well...

In the grand scheme of things I know that it means pretty much nothing at all.

Because what I do is so one note and so unpolished, not to mention often a little flat, except, of course, when E. sings along too, that it will never become a viral (or even a genetically-crippled, wholly non-productive bacterial) sensation of any kind whatsoever.

But I do know this....

You folks that do stop by do so for no other reason other than you like to visit occasionally to have a bit of a read and maybe get a little kick out of one of my aural snippets of wanton mimicry (or, as some of you have told me, the rambling introductions to the songs).

Which means that every read and/or listen and/or comment and/or discussion that takes place here is an honest one that is driven purely by the DIY aspect of the thing.

And I am extremely thankful to all of you for the joyous wonder of that.

Honestly and truly.


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A few other numbers you might (or might not) be interested in, purely from a wrapping up point of view....The six longer form 'Sunday Setlists' from last year now have more than 215,000 total listens...As for  this little F-Troop list blog itself....According to the Googleplex that (technically) owns it, there were 431,675 page views last year (monthly low - 24,661; monthly high - 55,171; monthly average - 35,973)...
And here is something really crazy...And the credit for this one goes to all of you 'Blog Crawl' watchers...We were the 2nd place referral service to Stephen Reese's truly excellent Lotuslandian Transportation blog....We were right behind the entire Twittmachine and just ahead of (get this!) Mark Zuckerberg's death star....Seriously (scroll down to the pink/orange bit).
As for a little navel/number gazing that actually does mean something...I first started listening to Marc Maron's podcasts around #75 before they really blew up...He is now at #457...Anyway, I got the 'honest listens' idea from him....Maron came up with the concept because, as an old show business hand who had been mostly unsuccessfully chasing the big 'break' for 25 years, he came to understand that he could, instead, actually attract an audience all by himself without the backing of a corporate machine...Of course, Maron has managed to use those honest listens as leverage to fling himself back into the big media maw because he's really good at what he does (i.e. he actually listens to the people he interviews and uses the Gzowski principle when things lag a little)...There's also the small matter that he passed the 100 million download mark some time ago (which means that he can now get people like Will Ferrell to visit his studio....errrrr...'garage' for an hour, or more, at a time).
The Gzowski principle?...(just in case you were wondering)...It's all pretty much explained...Here.


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