🎙️ Songs That Don’t Suck: The 2024 Don’t Suckie Awards 🎧🎤🏅
🎊 100 Episodes. 2 Seasons. 447 handpicked tracks.
This week, Songs That Don’t Suck hits a massive milestone with its 100th episode and closes out 2024 with the second annual Don’t Suckie Awards—Mark Bradbourne’s personal awards show for songs that delivered soul, skill, and staying power.
📈 A Year in Music Discovery (and Data)
Mark started this journey in 2022 to avoid becoming “musically dead”—and the stats don’t lie:
| Year | Minutes Listened | Artists | Genres |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2022 | ~23,000 | 1,000+ | 55 |
| 2023 | 43,580 | 2,500+ | 98 |
| 2024 | 42,000+ | 3,500+ | No genre count provided (thanks, Spotify) |
“The podcast continues to pay huge musical dividends—for discovery and joy.”
🎟️ Concerts = Church
Mark attended 16 live shows in 2024, including:
- The Bites (3x)
- Spanish Love Songs
- Barnes Courtney
- Iron Maiden (with The Hu)
- The Struts
- Wild Feathers
- Cleveland Orchestra
- Crash Test Dummies
- Bright Winter Fest
- Wynton Existing (twice!)
- Upcoming: Trans-Siberian Orchestra
“I went to church 16 times this year. And by church, I mean live music.”
📊 Podcast Growth
- 🎧 Followers ↑ 41%
- 🚀 74% were new listeners
- 🎙️ Top 5 podcast for 70+ fans
- 🏆 #1 podcast for over 20 fans
“To everyone who’s made this show part of their week—thank you. You’re why this works.”
🏆 The 2024 Don’t Suckie Awards
Mark reviewed 217 songs this year across 179 genre labels (!), using both Spotify metadata and pure ear instinct to sort nominees into 7 categories.
🎸 Rock
Winner: “Am That I Am” – Wynton Existing
- Raw, powerful, and true rock energy
- Mark fell for them after a live set at Bright Winter Fest
- “They sweat and bleed rock and roll”
🌾 Folk
Winner: “Once Upon a Time at Texaco, Pt. 1” – Amigo the Devil
- “Musically perfect,” story-driven, banjo-powered
- Mark is still begging for Part 2
- First shared in Episode 56
🎧 Indie/Alternative
Winner: “Sorry I’m Late, I Didn’t Wanna Come” – The Wombats
- Episode 92 standout
- Pop-adjacent with indie production and Bee Gees-ish falsetto
- Stuck in Mark’s head for months
🤘 Metal/Hard Rock
Winner: “Glitching Prisms” – Night Verses ft. Brandon Boyd
- Progressive but accessible
- Features Incubus frontman Brandon Boyd
- “A formula to win a Don’t Suckie Award”
🇺🇸 Country/Americana
Winner: “Midnight to Vice” – The Bridge City Sinners
- Recommended by listener Deb
- Banjo-driven, gritty storytelling
- Band is now on Mark’s 2025 must-see list
🎤 Pop
Winner: “Vampire Disco” – Friday Pilots Club
- From Episode 54
- One of Mark’s most played songs of the year
- Genre-hopping band strikes pop gold here
🦄 Unicorn
Winner: “Rule 36 (Long Way From Home)” – Fish and a Bird Cage
- Defies categorization: indie? folk? cello-driven magic?
- First shared in Ep. 84
- Ended up in Mark’s Spotify Wrapped top 5
💿 Total 2024 Stats:
- 🎵 217 shared songs
- 🕒 13+ hours of music
- 🎧 7 genre-based awards + 1 unicorn wildcard
“Last year I shared 231 songs—fewer this year, but the quality? Still strong.”
🙏 Thank You List
- 👨👩👧👦 Family for supporting the pod dream
- 🎧 Listeners who like, share, review, and rep the merch
- 🎙 Voiceover pro Zach Bowders (check out Data + Love)
- 🤘 Music pod fam:
- Scott & Rico (Rock and Roll Autopsy)
- Brian Colburn (My Weekly Mix Tape)
- Big Rick (Rock Talk Studio)
🚀 See You in Season 3
🗓 Season 3 launches January 7, 2025!
Until then:
- Follow on social
- Visit songsthatdontsuck.net
- Keep listening to (and sharing) Songs That Don’t Suck
📸 …and I quote…
❝ Rock does not come out of a computer. Rock comes out of the soul. ❞
— Mark Bradbourne, Songs That Don’t Suck 🎸🧠
