What is a Download?

If you're like most podcasters, you're probably keeping an eye on your download numbers. But do you know what those numbers actually mean? And would you be able to describe it to a potential advertiser?

Depending on what podcast hosting platform you're using, you'll see different numbers listed under titles like downloads, unique downloads, plays, stream, starts. But what do those numbers actually mean? The terminology is all very confusing. For example, I rarely actually download a podcast episode to my phone, unless I'm about to get on a plane or go to a place with no Wi Fi. So does that mean that my listens don't actually count towards a download?

Let's start by getting a basic understanding of how podcast distribution works. Your podcast audio files live on your podcast hosting platform. You upload them there and then they live on the hosting platform's servers. Podcasts are then distributed using an RSS feed. That stands for Really Simple Syndication. The RSS feed is essentially your podcast's address, and it directs people to your hosting platform's servers.

So we give that address, the RSS feed, to podcast players like Apple Podcasts. And then they make it really easy for people to listen to. If I click on Episode One on the app, Episode One will play. But what's happening on the back end is that Apple Podcasts is looking at the RSS feed and seeing where the podcast episode lives. And then it's playing the episode from that server we talked about earlier.

It's not technically downloading the whole episode in the way we typically think of a download. But every time your podcast server gets a request, it's called a download.

Here's the problem. When you're trying to understand how many people are listening to an episode, should you really count a download if someone accidentally starts playing an episode and then stops after three seconds? What if a bot tries to download an episode? If I'm listening to a podcast in my car, and I'm using my cell phone data, should it count as a download every time my phone connects to a new cell phone tower?

Because there are all these odd circumstances for downloads, it's really difficult to decide what counts. In order to create an industry standard, IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau), has created guidelines for what counts as an actual podcast download. They recommend filtering out any download that doesn't fit a specific set of rules, which basically boils down to a download counts if…

  1. It comes from a unique IP address and a good user agent (like Apple Podcasts, Pocket Casts, those kinds of apps)

  2. Once within a 24-hour period. (A podcast doesn't count as two downloads, if someone stops the podcast, and then goes to a meeting and then comes back and presses play the same day.)

  3. AND the episode also needs to be played for at least 60 seconds.

They're essentially filtering out someone starting and stopping an episode, bots, and then those accidental plays.

The one thing we always recommend to folks when they're looking for a podcast hosting platform is to choose one that is IAB certified. That means they're following the guidelines for getting download numbers that reflect actual downloads. They're using that industry standard. Here’s a list of companies that are certified.

Some platforms will show raw download numbers (every time the RSS feed is pinged) and the unique downloads (the downloads that count). And you always want to be using the unique downloads, which are the most accurate numbers. But here's one more thing.

To make things even more confusing, Spotify does everything that we just talked about differently. So Spotify will actually download your podcast one time to their servers. When someone listens to the podcast on Spotify, it's playing from their server instead of your podcast hosting platform's server. So it's not counting as a download in your stats, but it's counting as a stream on Spotify. If you take a look at your stats on Spotify, you'll see that they include starts, which means the podcast was played for less than 60 seconds, and streams, which means it had been played for 60 seconds or more. Double check to see if your hosting platform includes those Spotify streams. If not, we would recommend adding your unique downloads with your Spotify streams for your most accurate download number.

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