The Program — 2025 year in review

The Program audio series year in review: 2025

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Previous reports: 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024

It seems the world survived 2025, and this little sci-fi anthology podcast with it. Interestingly enough, The Program seems to become more of a utopia with each passing year, but only in comparison with the West which increasingly becomes more dystopian. Fortunately, the everloving God continues to accompany each tragedy with a miracle. So, to offset Western complicity in a genocide, He blessed us with The Program passing 1 million downloads. Granted, it took longer than expected (the strongest indicator the world is going to shit), with the show getting 140,000 downloads in 2025. Compared to 170,000 in 2024 and 240,000 in 2023, we’re talking about another decrease. This however could be simply due to releasing less episodes than usual - it was a lean year with only three episodes released that are part of the regular series:

On the other hand, I released a record number of what I call auxiliary episodes. Until this year, the only one in that category was Program Shows of Accolade, volume one of which I released in December of 2023 and the second volume of which dropped just a few days ago.

Three more shows The Program deigned worthy

There’s also a whole new show now that falls in the auxiliary category. Decompiling The Program is a series of interviews in which Jacqueline Ainsworth, one of Program’s most prolific performers, and myself discuss individual Program episodes and offer a behind-the-scenes peek for paid supporters.


When all is said and done, in 2025 I released 4 public and 5 subscriber-exclusive episodes, continuing to pursue the “quality over quantity” approach. Which seems to be resonating with the audiences, as the number of supporters continues to go up:

After 201 paid members in 2023, and 308 in 2024, The Program is now up to 452 paid members on Patreon. In comparison, I continued to lose paid subscribers on Apple Podcasts from 85 in 2023, to 68 in 2024, to 64 currently. However this has been a conscious decision, as I don’t promote it the way I used to. A lot of it has to do with monopolistic practices of Apple as a company, specifically the pound of flesh they’re extracting from businesses in the AppStore. But Apple Podcasts’ stagnation also played a role. In my opinion, their decision-makers should be asking themselves two questions:

  1. Why would creators promote a platform that takes a bigger cut? - Apple still takes 30% for the 1st year, dropping to 15% in subsequent years, whereas the total of my Patreon fees is less than 15% from the get go.
  2. Why would listeners choose a platform that offers less? - Patreon offers so many more features and user benefits that it’s not even worth comparing the two.

I was also glad that, for the first time since Patreon introduced the concept of free members, I amassed more free patrons than paid ones - 471 free VS 452 paid ones as mentioned. I am quite happy with this ratio, especially since free patrons are more likely to convert to paid ones than regular listeners are. It’s a testament of how critical it is to tap into the existing fan base and impart the importance of patronage to them.

Thankfully, it seems that — more than a decade after it launched — Patreon realized this as well, as the platform is continuing to roll out some welcome improvements in three key areas:

AUDIENCE BUILDING - In addition to being able to sign up free members, a big development in this regard is that patrons no longer need to use Discord to communicate, but have access to native chats:

The “H” in “Chats” is superfluous

AUDIENCE DISCOVERY - Creators now appear under a single identity across all Patreon, and their posts (termed “Quips”) will soon be visible to everyone. Unfortunately, they are still not available on desktop and the experience is quite user unfriendly on mobile, so I haven’t tried them out myself.

AMBASSADOR PROGRAMME - Patreon staff organizes monthly meetups with most active creators, giving them early access to upcoming features and gathering their feedback (and more importantly, actually acting on it).

On the topic of audience engagement, in March I discontinued sending monthly reports via the newsletter, converting those fans to free members on Patreon instead. At the same time, I made monthly updates available to everyone, to help communicate all the effort that goes into making of the show. I am now also better aware that keeping audiences engaged is crucial for authors such as myself, who often take several months to release a new episode. Here’s a selection of fun things we did in 2025.

We held a tournament to choose the best illustration the show’s official artist, Carlos Costa, graced us with so far:

The winning one was for Hard fork, released earlier this year. The other episode was released after the tournament so its illustration wasn’t in the running, but I personally find it just as strong (and I’m glad to report they were both sponsored by Program’s listeners like so many before).

We also held a contest on which 50 films should be preserved in the Program’s eternal ROM, with 67 fans rating 194 movies.

I also released four new quizzes in 2025, and gave out more free Program T-shirts to count.

Also, I continued with the traditional annual survey that helps me understand my audiences. Here are some of the more interesting results (note that survey-takers skew towards show patrons VS Program general audiences, as 72% of responders currently support the show financially; demographics have remained virtually the same when compared to last year).

One thing that didn’t remain constant during the 5 years I’ve been doing these surveys is that the vast majority of The Program’s audiences are now people who listen to audio dramas regularly.

In a way, I guess this was to be expected, as audio drama listeners are both most likely to discover the show, and to continue to listen to it (quite a few of my “normie” friends who listened to The Program because they know me personally fell off the wagon over the years, even though they loved the show - it’s just that listening to audio fiction does not come naturally to them).

The question about how audiences discovered the show offers valuable insight - but it’s not exactly actionable, as none of the three promotional tools bringing in most listeners are in my hands really.

Let’s start from the third most common one - recommendation from someone else AKA word of mouth. While I always encourage current listeners to evangelize the show, ultimately it’s outside my purview. I wish there was some kind of a referral programme to reward fans who bring in new listeners - I might try to concoct a solution in 2026.

The second most popular discovery tool is to (cross)promote your show on other podcasts. The trouble here is that The Program’s venn diagram of “sci-fi”, “slices of life”, and “socialism” doesn’t intersect with a lot of other shows. In fact, I haven’t found another podcast that covers two, let alone all three of these categories.

The most successful way people discover the show is through a fiction podcast network - in my case, the Rusty Quill Network. Callum and Tom, who manage their marketing department, have been most generous with The Program, and after drops on The Magnus Archives’ feed in 2021 and 2023, they arranged the third one in September of this year. But yet again, this isn’t something I personally control (which is for the better, as I’d probably end up spamming their listeners with all 37 episodes I released to date, costing us both of our audiences).

When it comes to listener locations, USA is still #1 (but down from two years ago, when Americans made up almost 65% of the audience).

As far as podcast players go, here’s what 2025 data looks like:

Compared to 2024 and 2023 numbers below, two things stand out:

1. Seems Spotify surpassed Apple Podcasts for the first time! I spoke about Apple Podcasts’ technological stagnation and it’s possible that declining numbers are the direct result of that. Alternatively, it’s possible Apple Podcasts is not losing market share at all. See those two blue spikes in the 2025 screenshot? I was informed the spike in July originated in a technical issue that made Spotify re-download a bunch of episodes, leading to inflated numbers for a lot of podcasters. Having said that, I’ve got no idea what caused the spike in April - perhaps The Program got promoted by Spotify somehow..? As I lamented in the past, Spotify’s lack of communication with creators (or at least with this particular creator) is still their greatest shortcoming in my book.

2. Seems Pocket Casts (which I personally happen to use) got the most meat off Google Podcasts’ carcass, jumping to almost 11.5% share from 4.7% two years ago.

When it comes to financials, here’s how much the show made in 2025:

Which leads me to the following takeaways.

1️⃣ As mentioned at the beginning of this report, Patreon is the powerhouse, bringing in 74% of the revenue. However, I view this as much of a weakness as a strength, seeing that Patreon is based in the US, and as such subject to caprices of the American government.

2️⃣ Ads have finally started to bring in palpable revenue. This is largely because Rusty Quill generously increased the revenue sharing agreement in my favour when we prolonged the contract.

3️⃣ Note that there were no sponsorships this year, meaning that for the first time ever no one reached out to me willing to pay $500 USD to have their ad baked-in at the beginning of the episode for posterity. When it comes to making money from merch, it’s a rounding error.

4️⃣ Last year I experimented with a way to subscribe to The Program annually through Paypal, but I nixed that idea for the similar reason why I sunsetted Buymeacoffee the year before that - every platform adds to the overhead, and is often not worth keeping (even if on paper it’s profitable).

Speaking of profit, set against production costs of $3,721 CAD, I’m $27,555 CAD in the black. This translates to roughly $2,300 CAD monthly gross to me as the showrunner. On one hand this is quite an achievement, and puts me ever closer to turning my hobby into my career. On the other hand, it’s still just barely over half of what I make working half time in IT. Meaning, 7 years after the show’s (soft) launch it’s still an open question if I’ll be able to turn The Program from a side project into a full time job. Here’s are my current thoughts on the matter:

● I keep hearing a lot of podcasters complain how this year marked a big podcasting downturn, but jokes on them - it’s always been this hard for people in audio drama, whose golden age didn’t end in 2025, but in 1955.

● I see how many new fans every Rusty Quill exposure brings, and that a lot of people on r/audiodrama still haven’t heard of The Program, making me believe I’m far from exhausting the market.

● Having said that, perhaps the audio drama market is saturated as a whole - after all, its barrier to entry is low, and a lot of shows end up fighting for the same limited amount of attention.

● I’m likely further hamstrung by the fact my content is high-brow & long-form, which comes at a disadvantage in the contemporary media landscape.

● Somewhat related, out of a 100+ people who filled out my annual survey none of them are younger than 18, while Spotify reports they make 1% of my audience (with further 5.5% being 18-22) - I’m sure I don’t have to explain how a lack of young audiences is not an encouraging sign for any medium.

Regarding this last point at least I am taking concrete action.

In September, the world welcomed one more fan of The Program - and the first one that didn’t have any say in the matter. Her father is hard at work to keep both her and the show alive - and I’m glad to report that, despite the practical obstacles parenthood poses to passion projects, I’m currently working on half a dozen or more Program stories. Join me next year to find out how much further along I was able to bring this figment of fiction to a self-sustaining reality.

In the meantime, please check out some of the existing episodes - now easier than ever thanks to the show’s webmaster Nikola, who implemented a way to sort and filter through them according to MOOD (Cerebral, Funny, Poignant, Exciting), NARRATIVE DEVICE (1st person, 3rd person, and Full cast), and SETTING (Frontend - how the show refers to stories set in “the real world”, and Backend - how the show refers to stories set in the simulation). Additionally, it is possible to list them based on AUDIENCE RATING (highest to lowest) and IN-WORLD CHRONOLOGY (from those set furthest in the past to those set most far away in the future).

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