Downloads, Plays, Streams, and Listeners

When you’re looking at your podcast analytics, you’ll encounter various metrics like downloads, plays, streams, and listeners. Each of these terms represents a different aspect of how your audience is engaging with your content. 

Here’s a breakdown of what a podcast download means and how it differs from plays, streams, and listeners.

What is a Podcast Download?

A download occurs when an episode file is saved from a server to a listener’s device. Every time an episode is fully downloaded or downloaded in chunks (e.g., through progressive downloads), it counts as one download.

Downloads are a reliable indicator of audience interest because they reflect intentional action taken by the listener to access the episode, even for offline listening.

Differences Between Downloads, Plays, Streams, and Listeners

If you’ve visited the analytics at Spotify or Apple’s dashboard, you might notice metrics such as Plays, Streams, or Listeners.

Spotify for Podcasters analytics dashboard

These metrics differ from downloads because they don’t control the source of your audio file hosted at RSS.com, so they have to rely on metrics recorded at the device level.

Measuring podcast downloads directly from your hosting platform offers a more comprehensive and accurate view of your podcast’s performance compared to relying solely on third-party apps like Spotify or Apple Podcasts, which only track data from their users, giving a partial picture.

Plays

For example, a "play" is recorded when a listener presses the play button on an episode, typically streamed directly from the server. Each time an episode starts playing, it counts as a play. Partial listens might also be counted depending on the podcast platform’s settings.

Plays indicate immediate engagement and are useful for understanding how often your episodes are accessed. However, at RSS.com we’re more concerned with downloads, since we can’t control what happens to a certain audio once is downloaded in the user device.

Streams

Then you might also see a "streams" that refers to listening to an episode in real-time over the internet without downloading the file. A stream is counted when the episode is played directly from the server without being downloaded for offline use.

Streams might show how many people are consuming your content in real-time, providing insights into listener behavior and content performance.

Listeners

Finally, you can also see "listeners" that refer to unique individuals who have accessed your podcast. Each unique device or user ID that plays or downloads an episode is counted as one listener. This metric is often deduplicated to avoid counting the same listener multiple times.

Listeners give you an idea of the size of your audience, helping you understand your reach and growth over time.

Summing it up

Measuring podcast downloads directly from your hosting platform offers a more comprehensive and accurate view of your podcast’s performance compared to relying solely on third-party apps like Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

• Downloads reflect committed engagement, and are measured each time a listener choose to play or save your content for online or offline access.
• Plays provide insights into how often your episodes are accessed and started.
• Streams indicate real-time listening without downloading.
• Listeners measure the unique audience engaging with your podcast, and it’s a synthetic metric developed at the app level.

By analyzing these different aspects, you can get a comprehensive view of how your audience interacts with your podcast.