Podcast Analytics

How to Interpret
Podcast Listener Numbers

How many people listen to a podcast? Podcast hosts publish “listener numbers”, but those numbers can be a little “squishy.”

To understand why, you need to understand a little of the technology behind podcasts. (Apologies if this is all old news, but I’d rather cover ground you already know than assume you know more than you actually do.)

The actual audio file that people listen to – on their phone, tablet or computer – is initially uploaded and stored on a podcast host. (I prefer BuzzSprout.)

When I publish a new podcast episode, I upload it to BuzzSprout. Then BuzzSprout makes it available to the world for listening.

Ways to Listen to a Podcast

There are actually 4 different ways that people can access that file to listen to it:

1. Listeners can link directly to the file located on the podcast host using the podcast’s URL
2. Listeners can download it from the podcast host
3. Listeners can stream it or download it through one a syndicator
4. Listeners can stream it or download it through embedded websites

Let’s take these one at a time.

Link to it

If you access the file this way, then the podcast host can get an exact count. This is pretty much the same way that you count visitors to a web site.

Download it

Here is where accurate counts start to get difficult. Although the podcast host can count the number of downloads, they cannot count the number of people that download gets distributed to.

So what do they do? They guess. The podcast industry’s best-guess is that a download generates some multiple of listeners.

(I won’t go into their reasoning. Just take it as a given that this multiple goes into calculating “Total Listeners”.)

Syndicators

Now accurate counts are really difficult. I syndicate all the podcasts I produce across all the major syndication platforms. This includes Apple, Spotify, Google, Alexa, I Heart Radio and Stitcher. (There’s more, but those are the biggest.)

This is where it gets really weird.

Each of those syndicators accesses the audio file from their own IP address. It’s impossible for the podcast host to count actual listens this way, because each listener from any syndicator looks the same.

There is literally no difference between one listener from Apple and one million listeners from Apple.

So again, we have to trust the industry’s best guess. And they guess if you’re on the syndicators I’m on, and have the connections I have, then “100 listens = 10,000 listeners.)

That’s where the “10,000 listeners” number comes from.

Is it 10,000 actual listeners?

There is no way to know.

But these multiples are truly educated guesses. They are calculated across thousands of different podcasts across various languages, countries, age ranges, and cultures.

In other words, they’re a pretty good “best guess.”

Embedding

When you go to the podcast website and look at the podcasts page, you are seeing embedded links that point back to the physical file on te podcast host.

Embedding makes it look like the episodes are actually on your website. Listeners can stream or download the files through that embedded link. Embedding offers the same advantages and disadvantages that we have with syndicators.

Every time a file is accessed from an embedded site, it comes from the same IP address, so it looks like the same event to the podcast host. Whether we have 10,000 people listen through our website, or only 1 – it all looks the same to the podcast host.

Summary

BuzzSprout’s analytics tell me precisely what they are able to count. In addition they provide those “best guess based on industry standards” numbers from the various syndicators.

BuzzSprout is one of the better podcast hosts out there and – as much as I trust anyone – I trust their numbers.

I hope this helps. Drop me a line if you have any more questions.

PS: Spoiler alert. Podcasters are the new Kronkites. Not sure how to start? Grab a copy of the free guide How to Produce and Publish a Podcast Epsisode for step-by-step instructions.