Podcast Pontifications

One of the things I lament most about podcasting is our lack of a common language around stats and performance. 

For the better part of 15 years now, Apple Podcasts (was: iTunes) has been the biggest app used to download podcast episodes across the board. In aggregate, they remain the leader. Thanks to aggressive moves by other big-money and big-user-base apps, the gap between Apple and it’s rivals is shrinking. But they still lead.

That’s true for my show too. Since the start of Season Three, I’ve seen 33.3% of all downloads to my episodes attributed to Apple Podcasts. That’s a little small compared to the “average” podcast, but my show over-indexes with podcast power users who are less likely to use consumer-grade listening apps. (Though Apple Podcasts remains my personal listening app of choice.) 

Examining the same time-frame, I see that 21% of downloads were attributed to Overcast, an iOS-only app that is held up as the gold standard for power listeners of podcasts. Again, because the nature of my content and the target audience, I’m not at all surprised that I have 3x the percentage of Overcast users than an “average” podcast.

At 10.3%, downloads attributed to Spotify are - pardon the pun - spot-on with the aggregate marketshare usually attributed to Spotify. The remaining 35% of downloads reflect the intentionally-diverse distribution methodology I’ve established, covering smaller podcast listening apps and browser-based requests. All normal stuff.

But things get weird when I start looking at individual episode downloads. Not just random weird either. Consistently weird in the same way. 

Started with yesterday’s episode and ignoring any downloads to other episodes than that one, I was surprised to Apple at only 23%. Overcast accounted for almost double the downloads of that episode at nearly 40%.

The weirdness didn’t stop there.The prior day’s episode also had Overcast on top and Apple trailing. The day before that also showed Overcast in the lead, again followed by Apple, albeit with a slightly narrowing gap between them. And the day before that. And the day before that. 

Rinse and repeat, and it was the same story with each episode. I had to go back a full 10 episodes - nearly three weeks - before Apple Podcasts finally pulled alongside Overcast for downloads of a single episode. 

What about Spotify, who was at 10.3% of all downloads? I don’t see see any appreciable Spotify download activity on the 10 most recent episodes of my show. 

Weird, right?

I worry the inherent behavior of apps is so vastly different that it’s impossible to evaluate them on an even playing field. I worry the IAB 2.0 guidelines that were supposed to eliminate confusions leave too much room for interpretation and fail at being a true “standard”.

My friend and fellow working podcaster JD Sutter thinks it’s more to do with Apple Podcast users grabbing several episodes at a time. And he may be right. I know I’ve seen spikes of downloads where one or two “people” using Apple Podcasts will download all 300 episodes in my show’s RSS feed. Is that enough to throw off my aggregate stats? Maybe. Or maybe it’s just weird.

To me, it’s more evidence that the things we think of as universal truths are anything but. It shows the weakness of making blanket assumptions about overall behavior and assuming those same behaviors take place on a very small scale. 

Stats are weird, right?

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Podcast Pontifications is published by Evo Terra four times a week and is designed to make podcasting better, not just easier.

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Support For Abortion Rights

While Americans overwhelmingly support the right of an individual to make their own decisions about abortion, unfortunately, that right is no longer protected everywhere in the U.S. The Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade on June 24th. Abortion is a basic healthcare need for the millions of people who can become pregnant. Everyone should have the freedom to decide what’s best for themselves and their families, including when it comes to ending a pregnancy. This decision has dire consequences for individual health and safety, and could have harsh repercussions for other landmark decisions. Restricting access to comprehensive reproductive care, including abortion, threatens the health and independence of all Americans. Even if you live in a state where abortion rights are upheld, access to safe medical procedures shouldn’t be determined by location, and it shouldn't be the privilege of a small few. You can help by donating to local abortion funds. To find out where to donate for each state, visit donations4abortion.com. If you or someone you know needs help, or if you want to get more involved, here are 5 resources: 1. ShoutYourAbortion.com is a campaign to normalize abortion. 2. DontBanEquality.com is a campaign for companies to take a stand against abortion restrictions. 3. Abortion.cafe has information about where to find clinics. 4. PlanCPills.org provides early at-home abortion pills that you can keep in your medicine cabinet. 5. Choice.CRD.co has a collection of these resources and more. We encourage you to speak up! And spread the word.

This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis:

OP3 - https://op3.dev/privacy
Chartable - https://chartable.com/privacy
Podsights - https://podsights.com/privacy