Understanding podcast downloads

In podcasting, downloads represent the number of times an episode is played or accessed by listeners. Each time someone hits the play button and engages with your content, it counts as a download. Downloads are a direct measure of your podcast’s reach and popularity.

Here’s how they are calculated:

• One Download per Device: Each time someone starts listening to an episode on a device, it counts as one download. If they start and stop the same episode multiple times on the same device, it still counts as one download. This prevents inflated numbers from repeated plays.
• Switching Devices: If a listener switches to a different device to continue listening, each device counts as a separate download. This helps track unique listeners accurately.
• Filtering Out Incomplete or Duplicate Requests: Partial requests and duplicate entries are ignored to ensure only genuine downloads are counted, making the numbers more reliable.
• Tracking IP Addresses: We exclude duplicate IP combinations to avoid counting multiple downloads from the same source, enhancing accuracy by effectively filtering out duplicates.

RSS.com Analytics

RSS.com provides industry-leading analytics to podcasters. Our analytics follow state-of-the-art industry guidelines to measure podcast metrics.

Here’s how our analytics service works:

• Data Collection: When a listener downloads an episode via platforms like Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, or Amazon Music, they leave a footprint in our system through a “log.” These logs include data such as the IP address (used to determine geolocation), device and operating system used, and specific files downloaded.
• Automatic Processing: We have automatic processes in place to continuously process, analyze, and distribute data extracted from our logs. This data is provided to our users via the Analytics tab in the podcast Dashboard.
• Metrics and Insights: Some metrics are straightforward calculations (e.g., total downloads), while others (e.g., Rolling Average Subscribers or RAS) are statistical inferences based on certain assumptions.

Key Metrics

The most important metric is the number of downloads. To ensure accuracy, we take a conservative approach by filtering our logs to exclude false positives, including methods to identify duplicates. This avoids inflated metrics and it is part of the technical guidelines for podcast measurement by the IAB Tech Lab.

Since we host your podcast episodes, we measure downloads across all podcasting platforms. For example, if you receive 50 downloads from Google Podcasts and 50 from Apple Podcasts, our analytics will show a total of 100 downloads.

Utilizing Analytics

This information allows you to assess the overall performance of your podcast, including your RAS and listener geolocation. For example, you can use your RAS to identify patterns that can help you maximize the reach of your show, such as peak downloads by weekdays and hours. Or create region-specific content targeting your most engaged cities.