Taylor Swift’s ‘New Heights’ Podcast Debut Nearly Doubles Trump’s Rogan Numbers, Crashes YouTube.
1.3 million people streamed Taylor Swift’s first hour on the New Heights podcast. That’s nearly double the initial audience for Trump’s October sit-down on Rogan. Trump looped in 800,000 straight away, but Swift’s climb is blasting past him in real time. In May, Trump blasted Swift on Truth, announcing she was “no longer ‘HOT.’” Someone should hand him the listener numbers.
According to SBJ Taylor Swift, on the other hand, hit 1.3 million live viewers inside the first hour, nearly twice Rogan’s audience last fall. The Travis and Jason Kelce podcast surged from 2.85 million to 2.91 million total subscribers in days. The traffic spiked so hard it crashed YouTube: the live stream blacked out an hour and 44 minutes in.
An official post on X/Twitter, seconds after, read: “The stream will be back shortly” while the tech crew scrambled to reboot. Looking ahead, Trump’s cameo still boasts the biggest reach. In the last nine months, it’s logged 59 million views.
Friday’s count puts the YouTube version of the New Heights show, featuring Jason and Travis Kelce, at 15 million. But Taylor Swift could close the gap fast. Spotify reported Thursday the New Heights episode, where she teased her new album and shared behind-the-scenes glimpses of her life, jumped the podcast’s average listeners by 3,000% and ranks among 2023’s most-streamed shows.
The Trump-Swift dynamic has leaned one-way since 2020, when she backed Biden. After a quiet 2021 and 2022, Trump reignited the spat last May and again the first week of August. He dubbed her “woke” and boasted: “Once I told the world the truth—that I can’t stand her (HATE!) — she got booed at the Super Bowl and vanished. NO LONGER HOT.”
For her part, Swift has yet to engage.