What Counts as a Podcast Download? Reading Your Stats

The first time you open your podcast statistics, the numbers can feel both exciting and confusing. Is a download a listener? Why does your count differ from another dashboard? Here is what the main terms mean and how to read them without fooling yourself.

What a download is

A download is a request for your audio file. When a listener presses play, or an app fetches a new episode ahead of time, a request reaches your host, and your host counts it. That is all a download is: evidence that a file was requested, not proof that a person listened to it.

Why raw requests are not enough

If a host counted every request, the numbers would be wildly high. Apps retry. Browsers ask for the same file twice. Automated programs, such as search crawlers and monitoring tools, fetch files with no human involved. So hosts clean their counts:

• Filtering out known bots and automated traffic.
• Counting once per listener in a time window. A common method counts one download for each combination of network address and app in a 24 hour period.
• Ignoring tiny requests that only check the file and do not fetch it.

Many hosts follow guidelines set by the IAB Tech Lab, an advertising industry group, because advertisers expect numbers measured in a standard way. If you plan to sell sponsorships, ask your host how it counts.

Downloads, listeners and plays

• Downloads are cleaned file requests. They are the number your host can measure.
• Unique listeners are an estimate of how many different people the downloads came from.
• Plays are how many times an episode was actually played. Only the app knows this. Apple Podcasts and Spotify show their own play and listener data in their own dashboards, which your host cannot see.
• Subscribers and followers are people who follow your show in an app. Many of them never open an episode.

A download does not always mean a listen. An app may download an episode in the background for a subscriber who never plays it. On the other hand, a listener who streams an episode on a phone also counts, because streaming requests the file too.

How to read your numbers fairly

1. Look at trends, not single days. One episode spiking after a mention somewhere is real, but a week or a month tells you more.
2. Compare episodes at the same age. Look at downloads in the first seven days of each episode. Older episodes have had longer to collect numbers.
3. Watch the shape. A show that grows steadily is healthy. A show with a sudden flat line may have a feed problem.
4. Do not compare hosts' numbers directly. Two hosts counting the same traffic can report different totals, because their filters differ.
5. Use the apps' own data too. The directories can tell you how many people actually listened and for how long.

Why numbers can drop after a move

If you change hosts, the old host's history stays with it, and your new host starts counting from the day of the move. Export your old statistics before you leave, and keep them next to the new ones. Our guide to switching hosts explains the full move.

The most useful number

Try to find out how many downloads an average new episode gets in its first week. It is the best single figure to track, because it rises when your show grows and falls when something goes wrong. It is also the figure sponsors will ask for.