It’s something that’s come up quite a bit recently → for most of podcasting’s history, we’ve measured success by counting file transfers.
That’s not a criticism, necessarily, as I’ve said many times. It’s just reality, and one borne of convenience and technology of the time.
A podcast episode was published to an RSS feed. A listening app requested the file. The hosting company counted the request. The industry called it a download.
That system helped build a multi-billion-dollar industry. Let’s not forget that.
But, as I’ve said recently more than once, if you’ve spent ANY time in podcast analytics recently, you’ve probably noticed the biggest platforms are increasingly talking about what happens after the download.
Spotify shifted to talking about plays months ago.
YouTube is new to podcasting and has always had views and watch time.
Apple has long …
