Why Downloads Don’t Reflect Your Podcast’s Success
There are two challenges when it comes to any form of digital media:
1. Get people to click on it.
2. Get people to stay there.
Whether it’s a song, blog post, or podcast episode, these are always the main goals. However, achieving one of these is almost useless without the other.
Clicks Versus Consumption
There is an endless sea of content on the internet today, and the average attention span is waning. It’s hard enough to get someone to stop scrolling and click on your podcast.
Just clicking isn’t enough though. Now you have to get them to listen to it.
Let’s use some hypothetical podcasts for an example. Podcast A has the best marketing in the world. Their show art, episode art, titles, descriptions, and social media content are always on point. Thanks to some viral social posts, 20,000 new listeners click on the latest episode of Podcast A. Clearly, they have achieved goal 1 (get people to click on it).
Unfortunately, they forgot to make good podcast content. The episodes are too long and boring, the volume is inconsistent, and the content seems low-effort overall. 5 minutes is how long it takes most listeners to decide if they will continue listening. So after those 5 minutes, all 20,000 people turn off the episode and find something else to listen to.
Depending on how bad the episode was, this entire experience may have done more harm than good. The podcast’s potential audience has just been reduced by 20,000 if all of those listeners decide they won’t listen to this show again.
On the flip side, Podcast B has the most well-polished, thoughtful, engaging content you have ever heard. Their loyal legion of 14 followers listen to every second of content produced and can’t get enough. Unfortunately, the podcast’s presentation doesn’t reach this same caliber. The art looks like it was made in MS Paint, the titles are boring, and their social media presence is completely ineffective. Simply put, listeners aren’t giving Podcast B a chance due to its appearance.
Podcast B has achieved goal 2 (get people to stay) by producing great content. But what good is the greatest content in the world if no one knows about it?
Now let’s circle back to the metric of podcast downloads — the single most coveted number in the industry. In these examples, the most recent episode of Podcast A boasts 20,000 downloads. Meanwhile, Podcast B only got 14 downloads.
If you showed these numbers to someone — including the owners of Podcast A and Podcast B — their response would probably be about how much better and more successful Podcast A is. From our examples above, we know this isn’t really the case.
How Downloads Work
Due to the technology behind podcasts, podcast downloads are counted as a binary metric. There are no partial downloads. Either a user downloaded the entire episode or none of it at all. What this does not account for is how much the user listened to or whether they listened at all. This is what caused the huge kerfuffle in late 2023 when Apple Podcasts stopped auto-downloading missed episodes for lapsed listeners — episodes that most of these listeners never actually played. Since a download is a download, these were being factored into the total downloads of episodes and shows. Naturally, this change caused a permanent drop in downloads for lots of shows and networks, particularly ones with large followings.
From my perspective, any blame put on Apple in this case seems completely out of place. The problem isn’t that Apple made your podcast less valuable by reducing your downloads. The problem is that those inflated download numbers never should have been the sole metric to judge a podcast’s value in the first place.
Spotify doesn’t pay artists if a user clicks on a song and immediately skips it. Medium doesn’t pay writers if someone clicks on an article and immediately leaves. So why do we continue to judge podcasts based on how many downloads they receive with no regard to the actual listenership?
Downloads simply measure goal 1. They show how many people have downloaded your podcast. That’s it. They do not reflect whether people listened to it or even liked it. Consistent download numbers can help you draw conclusions about some of these other areas, but they still don’t paint a complete picture if the show has a very high churn rate.
So how do we measure the success of goal 2?
Listen Through Rates
Listen through rates are what they sound like. They measure how much of any given episode was listened to by the audience. An average listen through rate of 97%, for example, is excellent. The listeners are sticking around for the full episode, and are likely just skipping part of the show’s outro. A listen through rate of 20% is bad. There is likely one segment of the show that listeners are tuning in for, or they just get bored 20% into the episode and leave.
Listen through rates, unlike downloads, are only provided by the listening platforms, not podcast hosts. The host only knows how many times Spotify requested downloads of an episode; they don’t know what happened after that. This leaves it up to platforms like Spotify and Apple Podcasts to present this data to you themselves.
Luckily, both of these platforms provide fairly detailed analytics. They even break down each episode by time segment, allowing you to see exactly which parts of the show listeners are skipping. This can be incredibly valuable in optimizing your content. If there is a slow, steady decrease in listeners throughout an episode, that’s ideal. If there is consistently a sharp drop around a certain point in your episodes, or even a dip in the middle, it may be time to reevaluate that segment of your show.
Measuring the Success of Your Podcast
Too many podcasters (and advertisers) get hung up on downloads, but it should be clear by now that they are only half of the story. Furthering this issue, download numbers are absolute. They do not account for the difference in potential audience for your podcast about bird law compared to Joe Rogan’s target audience of 18–35 year old men. Finding a niche in the podcast space is incredibly important, but it is also a natural limiting factor when it comes to downloads.
This may sound obvious, but it is often overlooked. When comparing download numbers, you should only be looking at successful podcasts in your space. No one judges the success of an indie documentary by comparing it to a Marvel movie’s box office results.
So how do you measure a podcast’s success? By providing context.
A representative from Apple Podcasts revealed in a product update earlier this year that podcasts’ completion rates, follows, and downloads are all factored into their top charts rankings. They aren’t evaluating podcasts solely on downloads. They are also considering the quality of those downloads.
Getting 20,000 downloads doesn’t mean much if the listen through rate is 5%. A listen through rate of 100% doesn’t mean much if only 2 people listened. 1,000 downloads per episode may not sound too impressive until you realize the top podcast in your niche is only getting 10,000 per episode.
How many people are clicking on your episodes? How many stayed until the end? How many came back for the next one? How large is your potential audience? By looking at all of these numbers, you can form a very solid view of where your podcast is at and what areas it needs to improve in.
If your listen through rate is great but your downloads are stagnant, maybe it’s time to reconsider your branding and marketing strategies. If you see spikes in downloads but struggle to retain listeners, reevaluate the show’s format and content.
One important thing to point out is that I have been discussing the measurement of your own podcast’s success/growth. Listen through rates are not public information (at least for now), so you can’t compare with other podcasts.
In the future, I would love to see a “plays” metric that accounts for a minimum listening time. If something to this effect was standardized across the industry, it would greatly improve transparency around listenership, while also curbing dishonest “pay-for-play” promotion methods.
Want to launch a podcast but don’t know where to start? Get my new eBook, The Ultimate Podcast Launch Guide, to learn everything that you need to know before you press record.
Do you need help with your podcast? I provide consulting, post-production, & distribution services to podcasts around the world. From launch to distribution, I can handle the technical side of your creative project. If you have any questions, please reach out to me. I would love to help. adamcgray.com
