The Psychology of your 20’s breaks through the podcast noise

The Future. Jemma Sbeg’s The Psychology of your 20’s, a podcast covering psychological concepts to tackle issues people face in their 20s, has been blowing up on Spotify’s charts this year. The podcast’s virality may be a great advertisement for the success of Spotify’s Anchor acquisition, demonstrating that it is possible to break out in a sea of literally millions of podcasts.

Viral loneliness
Australian psychology graduate Jemma Sbeg is at the center of a Spotify rags to (almost) riches story, reports The Verge.

• Her DIY podcast, The Psychology of your 20’s, was created on Anchor and scored 15,000 downloads in the first 10 months — nothing crazy.
• But after she released an episode on loneliness in April, the show took off. It now has 1.4 million downloads and is ranked in the top 10 of Spotify’s podcast charts in the US, UK, and Australia.
• In the US, it’s above megahits like NYT’s The Daily and Call Her Daddy (to help with discovery, Spotify’s podcast charts are mostly trends charts — ranking shows higher when their new-listener growth is skyrocketing).

The Psychology of your 20’s peaked at #4 on the charts a couple of weeks ago.

Anchored up
So, how did Sbeg’s podcast break out? She said Spotify told her that the show had:

• A straightforward title and episode topics that make it easy for audiences to understand quickly
• An underserved audience of women in their 20s
• And plain luck (it happens sometimes)

Although The Psychology of your 20’s is riding high, it’s not enough of a success for Sbeg to quit her day job (she’s a mental health consultant in Sydney). That’s mostly because she doesn’t haven’t access to Anchor’s dynamic advertising tool since it’s a US-only feature. Instead, she charges a $2 per month subscription fee and has a few sponsors.

But with guest-spot opportunities and book deal offers hitting her desk, the podcast may allow her to quit her day job soon enough… but only if she wants.