Understanding Your Podcast Analytics To Grow An Audience
Podcast analytics are the foundation of big growth decisions. Building an audience, increasing number of downloads, and creating a successful podcast all hinge on understanding the numbers. The data related to high performing episodes and those around listener demographics all provide powerful insights.
But the decentralization of podcasting poses a problem. Podcasters need to look at the aggregate numbers across every listening platform, from Spotify to Pocket Casts, to get a better view into their performance. To remove manual calculations, Castos and many other podcast hosting platforms, created one dashboard to display your data. It’s now easier than before to access a full snapshot an episode in one look.
However, having the numbers pulled together into a single dashboard is just a start. Understanding the analytics and putting their insights to work is how you make better data-backed decisions.
The world of podcast analytics is still in its infancy. And with that comes the need to educate podcasters around how the numbers are calculated and where they come from. Ultimately, the goal is to use your Spotify or Apple podcast analytics to discover new audiences and create more content they’ll love.
In this article, we explain your podcast analytics, where to access the numbers inside Castos, and how to use the data to grow an audience.
Accessing Your Castos Podcast Analytics Dashboard
Inside a Castos dashboard, you can access plenty of podcast statistics to learn more about your audience.
To get started, log into your Castos account, and from the main dashboard screen click “Analytics” in the top right corner. From the first report, you can start filtering the data by podcast (if you host multiple shows), alter the date ranges, and drill into specific episode performances.
Here’s a breakdown of where to find each data point, what it means, and how it can help you gain followers, more listens, and build a loyal fan base.
If you don’t have a Castos account yet, start your 14-day free trial today. Your podcast stats will appear in your dashboard the minute you upload an episode and share your voice with the world.
Total listeners/downloads
Total Listeners/Downloads represents the total number of people who pressed play or downloaded an episode over the entire lifespan of your podcast. In the example above, this podcast had 4,804 Total Listeners/Downloads from March 3rd to June 5th.
On the graph, look at the listening data over time for any spikes on particular dates. You can even filter by specific date ranges for more detail. Use this information to figure out your audience’s listening preferences. Do the majority of listens correspond to the day you release new episodes? Have the total listens remained consistent after making a change to the podcast’s format? Are total listens steadily increasing or decreasing since your launch day?
To access your Total Listeners/Downloads, click the “Analytics” tab in top right corner of your Castos dashboard. This data is on the front screen with the ability to alter date ranges and filter per podcast.
Total listens per episode
Top Episodes is a ranking of all published episodes by total listens. The total listen count is calculated from the number of times a play button was pressed across every podcast directory where your podcast is listed. The list is automatically organizes episodes from most popular to least. But there’s the option to sort them in ascending order, alphabetically, and by episode number. You can also set specific date ranges and search for episodes by name.
Total listens provides insight into the audience’s listening behavior because it counts a new listen every time someone presses play. Higher total listens could mean people are listening to the same episode more than once. Or starting an episode and finishing it later on. This metric also helps you make future content decisions. Is your audience engaging more with certain topics compared to others? Is there common threads between the lowest performing episodes that you can remove in the future?
To access your Total Listens per Episode, click the “Analytics” tab in top right corner of your Castos dashboard. Then click the tab named “Top Episodes”.
Listening methods
Listening methods is the podcast stat that shows from where your audience tunes in. Broken out by browser and app, the first graph automatically loads the total listens in the last 90 days from the top 10 episodes. Again in this report, a listen is counted anytime someone presses play.
You can update the data by specific date ranges and load listen count from every episode in your catalog. In the second tab, you also have the option to view performance by device. You can determine if people use Apple, PC or Android desktop and mobile devices to listen.
The report compiles data from your Apple Podcast analytics, browsers like Google Chrome, Safari, or Firefox, and apps like Pocket Casts, Stitcher, and more. Castos users can download PDF versions of each graph as well.
While it’s important to list a show across as many platforms as possible, use these podcast analytics to determine which listening platforms and devices your audience prefers.
Seeing a lot of listens from Chrome? That means people are going to your website and consuming episodes from the embedded player. Is there an opportunity to add transcriptions or other resources to enrich the listening experience? Is there a lot of activity coming from Stitcher? You could qualify for their advertising revenue sharing program to start earning money from each episode. Does the majority of your audience use Android devices? It may make sense to update your call-to-action to list Android-specific apps instead of only promoting a subscribe link to Apple Podcasts.
To access your Listening Methods stats, click the “Analytics” tab in top right corner of your Castos dashboard. Then click the tab named “Listening Methods”. From this screen, you can toggle between app, browser, and device data.
Spotify podcast analytics
Spotify is growing their industry position and as a result, more users are consuming podcasts on their platform. Broken out into a separate tab, your Spotify podcast analytics report shows the total listens per episode by any date range. In this report, a listen is counted anytime someone presses play.
Similar to the Listening Methods report, these Spotify podcast stats can inform whether their platform is popular among your listeners. It’s important to remember listening platforms have different user demographics. For example, 29% of Spotify’s user base are millennials. If your podcast caters to an older age bracket, seeing less engagement from Spotify isn’t as alarming because their user base isn’t comprised of your ideal listener.
To access your Spotify podcast analytics, click the “Analytics” tab in top right corner of your Castos dashboard. Then click the tab named “Listening Methods”. From this screen, you can toggle to the “Spotify” tab.
Geographic podcast stats
Your podcast’s geographic stats represent where in the world listeners are located. The map is interactive so you can drill into specific countries to see which cities listeners live in. As added bonus, the data can be altered by date to see how an audience’s geographic breakdown changes over time. Users can download a PDF version of the data and graphs by city or country as well.
Your geographic distribution is an important metric to track, especially when looking at monetization opportunities. If you’re considering hosting live events, start with the cities where the majority of your listeners live. Pitching a local brand for a sponsorship opportunity? Show them how many people in their target cities tune in to your podcast to highlight your value.
To access Geographic podcast analytics, click the “Analytics” tab in top right corner of your Castos dashboard. Then click the tab named “Geographic Stats”. The report automatically loads a country chart with data from the last 90 days.
Unique listeners and subscribers
Unique Listeners represents the number of individual people who pressed play on an episode. This metric is different than Total Listens because it removes multiple plays by the same person. It provides an accurate report of the number of people who engaged with an episode, as opposed to the number of times the play button was pressed.
Comparing Unique Listeners to Total Listens per Episode is a useful ratio to further understand your audience’s engagement. Does an episode have 2x more Total Listens than Unique Listeners? That may mean your audience consumed it more than once or started and finished it later. If you publish an episode that’s a bit different than your typical format, use this ratio to see if users changed their listening habits.
Subscribers is a proprietary calculation that is unique to Castos. Our algorithm pulls your podcast download stats from every platform and based on their listening behavior, tallies the number of users who subscribed to your show. Use the Subscriber count to show the number of people who receive automatic updates for each new episode. They are your active, most loyal supporters.
Note: Unique Listeners and Subscribers is available for Pro plans only.
To access Unique Listens and Subscribers, click the “Analytics” tab in top right corner of your Castos dashboard. Then click the tab named “Listeners Info”. The report automatically loads each episode’s Unique Listens over the lifetime of your podcast. And your Subscriber count appears in the top right corner.
Additional Spotify Podcast Analytics
Spotify provides four main podcast stats about the show overall and lets you drill into an individual episode’s performance:
- Total Starts: how many times a person pressed play.
- Total Streams: how many times a person pressed play and played at least 60 seconds.
- Total Unique Listeners: how many unique listeners pressed play for each episode.
- Total Followers: how many users clicked the “follow” button on Spotify. For those who subscribe, Spotify automatically downloads new episodes so this number doesn’t accurately reflect how many of your followers played an episode.
- Individual Episode Performance: drill into each episode by viewing average time users spent listening to it and the percentage of users who listened to 25%, 50%, and +75% of an episode.
Your Castos dashboard highlights Total Starts per Episode under our Spotify Listening Methods report. But if you notice a lot of activity coming from Spotify, you should review their full dashboard of podcast stats.
How to see additional Spotify podcast stats
Seeing additional Spotify podcast analytics starts by logging into your Spotify podcast dashboard.
The dashboard’s first screen shows all time Starts, Streams, and Listeners for every podcast you manage. Clicking the “Catalog” tab then shows individual podcast performances. This is where you can drill into specific episode by clicking on each podcast name.
With more information about your audience’s gender and age breakdowns and the average listening time per episode, seeing your Spotify stats paints a fuller picture of your fan base. In partnership with your Castos podcast analytics, podcasters who use analyze both data sets are steps ahead of their competition.
Summary
Whether you’re podcasting as a passion project or it’s the main focus of your business, understanding the basics of podcast analytics is essential. Many podcast hosting platforms offer different stats and it’s an area of our product that we take very seriously.
Making routine advancements and updates to our analytics reports is a priority at Castos. Our goal is to help our customer create successful podcasts. And it becomes easier to achieve that when you understand who your audience is, where they consume your content, and their listening behaviors.
All you have left to do is sign into your Castos dashboard to find where the best growth opportunities are hiding.
Originally published at https://castos.com on June 9, 2020.
