Podcast Stats Made Simple

I've brought in Buzzsprout co-founder Tom Rossi to demystify podcast analytics. We walk through what a download is in Buzzsprout and how to make sense of the analytics provided by some of the big players like Apple and Spotify! While podcast stats aren't the biggest and most important metric of podcast success this episode provides some clarity around what all those numbers mean! 

Extra Resource on Podcast Analytics

• Understand Podcast Analytics Like A Pro!

If you have questions for the Podcaster Success team about your podcast stats, email us at support@buzzsprout.com.

Keep podcasting!

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome to Podcasting Q&A
• 1:08 What Qualifies As A Download?
• 2:41 Streams Versus Downloads
• 5:55 Defining Analytics Outside of Buzzsprout
• 6:56 How Do I Know If These Downloads Are Real?

Transcript

Cara Pacetti: 0:00

Welcome to Podcasting QA, brought to you by the people at Buzz Sprout. I'm your host, Cara Pacetti, and I'm bringing you the best tips and strategies to keep you podcasting with confidence. I'm really excited about today's episode because we are talking all about podcast stats. And while I recently released a Podcasting Q&A episode focusing on the success of your podcast outside of the world of stats, I still wanted to do a deep dive into this topic because there's a lot of questions and a lot of confusion around it. And so joining me today to answer these questions, I could not think of anyone more qualified other than Buzzsprout co-founder Tom Rossi.

Tom Rossi: 0:43

Thanks for having me.

Cara Pacetti: 0:44

Of course. I'm so happy you have earned the title of the stats guy.

Tom Rossi: 0:48

I believe it. I believe it.

Cara Pacetti: 0:50

So if you didn't know it, Tom has presented on this topic numerous times. And honestly, he does such a great job at educating us on what all the download data means when it comes to podcasting. So I'm really excited. I know that your perspective on this is really going to help our listeners to have a better understanding of these metrics. All right. So the first question I want to ask is about what we're seeing inside of our Buzzsprout account. So if you're a hosted here with us, you will see downloads. That is what we measure here at Buzz sprout. So can you explain what that means and how we measure that in Buzzsprout?

Tom Rossi: 1:23

Yeah, absolutely. So we are a podcast hosting company. So Buzzsprout hosts the podcast. That means that when anybody wants to listen to it, whenever they want to stream it, whenever they want to download it to their computer, they're going to actually access it from our servers. And that's where they're going to download it from. And so we call those downloads. So whenever anybody accesses your episodes, we monitor, well, how much did they download? And then we trigger what's called a download. That's what we call it. So as a hosting company, we call it a download whenever we see somebody access your data for uh, you know, a certain, a certain amount of the data, right? Like if they just download the header of your audio file, we're not going to count that. But if they download a certain amount of it, we're going to say, okay, that's that's a download. And we have certain procedures that we go through with figuring out, well, do we want to count it? So for example, if we see more than one download from the same IP address within a 24-hour period, well, maybe they, you know, they started it and then they listen to the rest of it. And, you know, so we only count downloads once every 24 hours per IP address, per podcasting app. But that's all what we do as a podcast host. And other podcast hosts, most of us do the same kind of process. We call it IAB. It's an IAB certified approach to counting downloads.

Cara Pacetti: 2:40

Right. I feel like downloads can really be confusing because back in the day, I think downloads, or maybe just as an average listener, we think that you are actually saving that file. You are downloading it. The way that you're explaining it, this could be happening whether or not you are saving that file or you're just streaming it. Is that right?

Tom Rossi: 2:58

100%. So it causes a ton of confusion. People are like, well, you only count downloads. What what what happens if they listen to it while they're driving and it's just, you know, streaming it? Well, from our perspective, all we see is that somebody was accessing your episode and they were, you know, downloading it. They were accessing that data on whether it was being downloaded to their device to be listened to later, whether they were streaming it live to listen to it, whether they downloaded it and never actually opened it up and listened to it. No podcasting host can tell you uh if that happened.

Cara Pacetti: 3:26

That makes a lot of sense. I don't know if this helps listeners, but my mental picture when you explain it that way, it's almost like a like a loading bar. And it's like as soon as that file is requested, it starts to clock and it's starting to track forward. So I don't know if that's a helpful mental picture.

Tom Rossi: 3:42

Yeah. And then what happens is when that bar starts to progress, it'll hit a certain point where now we consider it a download. So we say, okay, we're gonna count this as a download. Now they might be downloading it to their device to listen to it later. They might be listening to it with a a player of some sort. Um, we don't know that. All we know is that bar progressed and we're gonna count it as a download.

Cara Pacetti: 4:03

Right. That's awesome. Thank you. That helps explain things. But you did mention that it's the download of the episode. But then how do you tell if someone is really listening? Because I think as a podcaster, you'd go, okay, well, that's a little concerning. Then are they listening? So can we tell that?

Tom Rossi: 4:19

That is the million-dollar question. So as a podcast hosting company, we can tell you that it's been downloaded, but we can't tell you what they did with it. The only person that can tell you what they did with it is the player, whoever is actually monitoring what they did with it when they downloaded it. So for example, Apple Podcasts can tell you, did they actually listen to it? How much did they listen to it? How many times did they listen to it? Apple Podcasts can tell you that. Spotify can tell you that, but your podcast hosting company can't tell you that. And so that's where you go to these other resources to be able to look at how much did they engage with the content after it was, you know, quote, downloaded.

Cara Pacetti: 4:56

That is definitely something that we see in support is podcasters reaching out and they're saying, but how do I know? Did they listen to the entire episode? And we tell them that's it's hard for us to see from our end, but there is a way that if you look into those directory accounts, they can provide other information that we just don't have access to.

Tom Rossi: 5:16

You can do that with Apple and you can do that with Spotify. And it's not so much the directories as it is the players that they actually use to consume the podcast. Now, Apple can't tell you how much they consumed in Spotify. We can't tell you how much they consumed in Spotify. If they consumed it in another type of player, say Castamatic or Overcast, we can't tell you. No one can tell you other than the player how much did they actually engage with that content? That is a great point.

Cara Pacetti: 5:40

Yes. Thank you for clarifying that. Another point of confusion sometimes with podcast metrics are these terms that we're using. So in Buzz sprout, as you've explained, we call them downloads. But there's other terms like streams and plays. So can you kind of clarify what they are tracking and what's the difference in those terms?

Tom Rossi: 6:00

I wish I could. I really can't because everybody defines it differently. So, for example, if you're looking at your metrics inside of Spotify, Spotify gives you all kinds of different metrics with different words. And those same words are used by Apple, but they're used in different ways. So for example, plays. They'll talk about plays. Well, what counts as a play? I think Apple counts it. Whenever they click the play button, that's considered a play. Well, if I pause and play and pause and play and pause and play, I've hit it like four times, but that's four plays. From my perspective, it's one download. And they might have only listened to 10%. It really depends on where you're looking. Everybody uses those terms differently. As a podcast hosting company, we've kind of standardized on downloads. But then each player, when you go and look at their metrics, you really have to look at how do they define it.

Cara Pacetti: 6:45

Okay. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So you're looking inside of your players, and that's how you're gonna define the stats that you're seeing, just based on how they define it. But I think the underlying question to it all is how do I know if these downloads are real? So are they really listeners tuning in?

Tom Rossi: 7:01

Yeah, I think that's the hard question to answer. And so as a podcast hosting company, uh, we have limited information to go off. And so at Buzz sprout, we want to be the best statistics we can provide as a hosting provider with the limitations that we have. And we are aggressive in filtering out that data. And I don't know why. I don't know that anybody can ever explain, but there are tons of bots and things that download all the time that should not be counted as downloads, but they try to make themselves look like legitimate downloads. And I don't think it's always, you know, nefarious actors trying to inflate their statistics. It's just the nature of the business. And at Buzzsprout, we care about our statistics, we care about our podcasters. We want to encourage them with real data, with real numbers. We don't want them to, you know, second guess. So when they see that number start to go up, they can be confident that it's real. And as a result, you know, we're very aggressive in the way that we manage our statistics. And as a result, you'll hear from podcasters, sometimes they switch over to Buzzsprout and their numbers, quote, go down. But really, what's happened is we are just better at identifying that bot traffic and not legitimate traffic.

Cara Pacetti: 8:04

Absolutely. And as much as that might be disheartening at first, I think when you hear the why behind it and you realize that, okay, now I'm really actually getting some accurate analytics of my podcast, that's a lot more reassuring because otherwise that inflated number from bots is just not worth it.

Tom Rossi: 8:20

And then when they see the numbers start to go up, you know, then they can be like, wow, that really is. I'm making a difference. I'm getting more people into the orbit of my podcast.

Cara Pacetti: 8:28

Absolutely. Yes. And like I said at the beginning, I have another episode that really hits on the metrics of podcast success. So while all of this information is usable, is worth tracking, it's not the only measure.

Tom Rossi: 8:43

It's funny. I talked about podcast statistics a thousand times. And I always start with the same thing, which is, you know, they aren't the biggest, most important thing. No. They are a thing. There's something that you should be aware of that you should be able to read and understand, but it's not the definition of success.

Cara Pacetti: 8:58

Absolutely. With that said, we now kind of understand what we're tracking and what the downloads and the data means. I want to offer advice on how do we use that? So, how can we use what we know to better shape what we're doing? So, you know, learning more about our demographics, learning about where listeners drop off. If you're interested in something like that, we will release that in just a couple of weeks. Tom, thank you so much for being here and helping me answer these questions today. If you have questions about your podcast stats or need help from the podcaster success team, you can always reach us by emailing support at buzzsproute.com. If you have a question you'd like answered on a future Podcasting Q&A episode, just click the Send Us a Text link in the show notes and send in any questions that you have. Be sure to join us every Monday to kickstart your week. Thank you so much for listening. And as always, keep podcasting.