On May 6, Spotify announced in a blog post that it’s adding ‘plays’: a new podcast metric which will allow creators to see what kind of content resonates the most with listeners.
Specifically, plays are a metric that tracks the number of people have “actively” watched or listened to individual podcasts, meaning that plays from podcast clips and previews won’t count. Additionally, it’s worth noting that plays are different from impressions and “discovery events” — users have to watch or listen to the whole podcast episode for it to count as a play.
According to Spotify, play counts are set to be rounded to the nearest thousand million. Episodes with less than 1,000 plays will display <1K. For the first 24 hours after posting the podcast, there will be no plays metric. Instead, it’ll have a label that says ‘New.’ The consumption of Spotify podcasts from other platforms still counts towards creators’ plays.
Creators will be able to see these metrics on their Spotify for Creators and Megaphone dashboards. On Spotify for Creators specifically, creators will also be able to see viewers’ consumption hours. Spotify also notes that the monetization will remain the same.
“Ultimately, plays will offer creators and their fans a clear way to measure which podcast episodes capture the most attention on Spotify,” the blog post adds. “We’re always working to bring better insights to creators, foster greater discovery for people, and help content reach even wider audiences. Stay tuned for more.”
