Why are there differences between RSS.com Analytics numbers, and numbers from Spotify and Apple Podcasts?

Our state-of-the-art approach to analytics provides very accurate measurements of your podcast downloads. However, when comparing our analytics to the insights offered by platforms such as Spotify, you might see inconsistencies in some of the metrics such as downloads.

Two reasons the numbers differ

This can be due to two main reasons: 

1. Different measurement techniques, guidelines, and terms. Platforms measure listening at the device, using their own definitions, and those definitions differ both from each other and from ours. RSS.com reports downloads: following IAB guidelines, we count a download when at least 60 seconds of the episode file is delivered to a device, counted once per episode, per listener, per day (00:00 to 23:59 UTC). Spotify, Apple, and other apps instead report plays, which are measured when someone actually presses play. Spotify counts a play at 30 seconds, close to the Alliance for Measurement in Podcasting (AMP) definition. Apple counts any play over 0 seconds, and counts every tap. Because a download confirms delivery and not that the episode was heard, and because each platform's "play" means something different, these numbers are not meant to line up. For a full breakdown of how each platform defines a play, see Downloads, Plays, Streams, and Listeners.

2. Time and frequency of updates. Most of RSS.com's analytics update hourly, and the day resets at 00:00 UTC. Different podcast directories like Spotify and Apple have different timeframes for their measurement of a "day," and updates to their analytics happens at different intervals. Spotify, for example, updates their analytics every 24 hours around 20:00 UTC. Meaning at 19:00 UTC you might see 23 additional hours' worth of downloads on RSS.com that won't appear on Spotify until their daily update.

What Spotify and Apple can show that we cannot

There are some very useful metrics available exclusively on Apple, Spotify and other platforms as well. For instance, the reason Spotify can provide metrics like listener demographics and we can't, is due to users of its platform being registered and verified. If a Spotify user downloads one of your episodes, for example, Spotify will know the user's name, gender, age and they can therefore aggregate this data to display demographic insights on who is listening to your podcast on their platform.

The main challenge with the aforementioned insights, is that they are platform-dependent. Analytics found on Spotify or Apple are only representative of that platform's subset of your listeners and followers. Apps like Spotify or Apple Podcasts only track data from their users, giving a partial picture.

In other words, Spotify can provide insights such as demographics and streams only for the people who listen to your show via Spotify but not for listeners that use YouTube Music or Apple Podcasts. Similarly, Apple Podcasts can provide you with the percentage of Engaged Listeners only for users that listened to your podcast via Apple Podcasts and not via Spotify or YouTube Music, and so on…

Why your host sees the whole picture

In a nutshell, RSS.com counts downloads from every app that fetches your episodes from RSS.com, so you see your audience across apps in one place. Plays of a copy hosted elsewhere are not counted, for example the video copy on your YouTube channel, or Spotify's copy when RSS America is not your show's licensor in Spotify for Creators. No platforms outside of RSS.com are able to provide you with a comprehensive view of all your listeners and followers, because they only hold a subset of your analytical data from their own specific platforms.

For this reason, Podcasters typically merge aggregated data from their hosting service with the platform-specific data offered by companies like Spotify, Apple and YouTube.

Podcasters usually refer to their hosting service analytics to get an overall view of key metrics such as downloads, geolocation, devices, etc… They subsequently compare and merge these statistics with other platform-specific metrics.

If you have switched hosts

The same idea applies when comparing one hosting platform to another. Hosts don't all count downloads identically (filtering rules, deduplication windows, and what counts as a valid request can vary), so your totals may look higher or lower after migrating to or from RSS.com. That can reflect a difference in measurement methodology rather than a change in your audience. RSS.com follows the IAB Podcast Measurement Technical Guidelines (we're v2.2 certified), so your downloads are measured against a consistent, deduplicated standard.

When compiling metrics from different sources, remember to compare the data based on what it represents and how it's collected, and not necessarily by matching terms for metrics from different platforms.