Somebody just moved the goalposts on podcast metrics. And most podcasters didn’t even notice.
The Alliance for Measurement in Podcasting — AMP — has defined a new cross-platform standard for what counts as a ‘play.’ Spotify has already adopted it.
In this episode, Neal breaks down what this actually means for indie podcasters — why your dashboard numbers are about to look fairly different, why that doesn’t mean your show is doing better, and why optimising for any play-count threshold is optimising for the wrong thing.
You’ll hear:
— What AMP is and why they’re trying to standardise this
— What is ‘intentional consumption’ in Spotify’s words, and what that actually means
— Why Apple’s definition is still extraordinary (and not in a good way)
— The one metric that actually tells you if your show is working
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Transcripts
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Did you hear that sound?
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That was the sound of somebody just massively moving the goalposts
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around podcast measurement.
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And the funny thing is, when it happened, most podcasters didn't even
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look up from their hosting dashboard, or they were too busy being distracted
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over debates around the efficacy of short-form clips for growing a podcast,
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or whether a podcast is even a podcast if it doesn't have an RSS feed.
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But back to the main point There's this group called the Alliance for
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Measurement in Podcasting, AMP, and they've been working on a cross-platform
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standard for how plays get counted.
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You know, so that when Spotify says you had 20,000 plays, and Apple Podcasts
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says something very different, and YouTube says something else entirely,
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there might actually be one shared definition underneath all of it.
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That sounds reasonable.
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I mean, that sounds like the kind of boring but necessary
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work the industry actually needs.
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And then you look at what they actually define to play as 30 seconds
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of continuous streaming, not 60, 30.
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Spotify's already adopted it.
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They've updated their creator dashboard and everything.
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So as of right now, if someone opens your episode on Spotify and listens for
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31 seconds before going back to whatever they were doing before, well, that counts.
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That's a play The creator gets the dopamine.
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But we need to talk about what this actually means for you and your podcast
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Hello, this is Podmastery, podcasting insights for indie creators.
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I'm Neal Veglio, the podmaster, and each episode I'm doing all I can to
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help you achieve podmastery and get better results from your podcast.
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Let's be fair for a second before I get into why this AMP measurement story
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deserves way more skepticism than it's currently getting, particularly from
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so-called podcasting experts on LinkedIn who seemingly haven't dug deeper than
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the headlines on this particular one
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The reason AMP exists is a genuine problem.
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Right now, a download means something very different depending
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on which hosting platform you're on.
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A play means something different depending on which app your listener uses.
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And for years, the IAB standard defined a play as 60 seconds.
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Apple Podcasts, and this is extraordinary by the way, defines
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a play as any listening that lasts more than zero seconds.
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Zero.
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I.e., you open the file from the RSS feed through their app and then close it
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again immediately, and Apple counts that.
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Someone pressed play by accident.
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while their phone was in their pocket So yes, a standard
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is better than no standard.
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I'm gonna grant that one without argument.
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But here's what I want you to notice about this 30 seconds thing specifically.
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Spotify's justification for it was that 30 seconds is, and I'm
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quoting here, "A reliable indicator of intentional consumption."
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Their phrase, their thinking, intentional consumption.
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so what they've essentially said is if you listen for half
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a minute, you chose to be there.
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And I can see the logic of that.
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Someone who hits play and then immediately closes it, well, that's noise.
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But someone who's still there at 30 seconds made a deliberate choice.
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But here's what 30 seconds of continual playing is not.
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It's not someone who heard your hook.
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It's not someone who stuck around for your argument.
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It's not someone who got any value from your episode at all.
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In fact, it's probably not even somebody that's gone beyond the pre-roll ad
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If you're hosted by Acast or any other similar platform that plays their ads
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at the beginning of your content It is at its most generous someone who
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decided they hadn't yet heard enough to make them want to leave, and that
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gets counted exactly the same as someone who listened to 45 minutes
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Now, why does this matter for you as a podcaster who isn't hosting through
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Acast, probably isn't running pre-roll ads, and doesn't have a brand team
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obsessing over impression metrics?
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Well, it matters for two reasons.
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First of all, your numbers are about to look different.
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If you've been comparing your performance against previous episodes or against
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industry benchmarks, or even against what your hosting platform has been
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telling you, well, you may see a big difference in your stats, not because
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your show's changed in any way, because what they're counting has changed.
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Secondly, and this is the one I care way more about, if you start optimizing
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for this metric, you are going to be optimizing for the wrong thing.
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30-second plays are a vanity metric, pure and simple.
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The number that actually tells you whether your show is working is
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retention, how far through your episodes people are actually listening,
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And Apple Podcasts and Spotify will give you that data, at least in aggregate
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form, and that's the number to care about
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You just got to dig a bit deeper to find it.
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So I'll say this plainly.
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If someone consistently listens to 70 or 80% of your episodes, that
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is worth more than any amount of play counts of any description.
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That means that person's engaged.
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That person might be the kind of person that would take action on something
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you suggest or recommend you know, like clicking an affiliate link or buying
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something that you've been paid to promote More importantly, that person might
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also tell someone else about your show.
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but someone who hit play and was still there at 31 seconds because they were
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looking for the skip button and couldn't get to it two seconds sooner, well,
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that person is not your audience There's still the question of Apple Podcasts,
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and James Cridland pointed it out on the most recent episode of Podnews Weekly
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Review at the time of recording this.
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He said, "Apple Podcasts is now the third most popular podcast app."
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Third, no longer first or even second, and they're the outlier on all this.
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Apple still counts a play as any duration greater than zero seconds, which means
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every accidental tap, every pocket play, every person who opened your show
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and immediately went, "Nah, this isn't for me," well, Apple counts those.
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The industry apparently needs Apple to come on board for this standard to mean
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anything at a cross-platform level, and Apple hasn't indicated any intention
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to do so yet, which means right now the same show might have one set of numbers
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in Spotify's dashboard and a completely different set in Apple Podcasts Connect,
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and neither of them is telling you what you probably think they're telling you
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This has always been true, by the way.
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The idea that podcast metrics are reliable, comparable, or particularly
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meaningful has always been a sort of fan fiction that the industry maintains
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to keep advertisers comfortable.
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What's changed is that at least part of the industry is now
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trying to make it less fictional.
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So that's not nothing.
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But don't mistake progress on the metric for the metric suddenly becoming good.
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They are not the same thing.
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If this has got you thinking about whether your own podcast success is
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being measured correctly or whether you've been staring at the wrong numbers
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entirely, there are a few ways to dig deeper with me, and one of those is to
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head to podmastery.co and click Need Help, and then we can figure out what's
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actually going on with your show and tailor the advice for your specific show
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I'm Neal Veilleux.
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Thanks for listening, and until the next episode, good luck with your
