Earlier this month, Spotify announced a new podcast metric. As the name implies, ‘Plays’ would show both podcasters and audience members exactly how many full plays a podcast episode has received.
While the platform emphasized in its announcement that this metric would “bring better insights” to creators, the backlash was thick and fast. As reported by NBC News, many creators were deeply unhappy at this development, with podcast ‘The Psychology of Your 20s’ claiming that this new metric could “hurt so many podcasts.”
Similarly, podcast manager Adrienne Cruz, who manages four small podcasts, echoed others in saying that this metric would turn podcasts into a “popularity contest.” Countless creators also noted that if a podcast had low views, it might put listeners off.
Creators expressed similar sentiments in a Threads post responding to the announcement, with some arguing that the numbers might not be representative of a podcast’s actual popularity because it doesn’t account for the number of listeners on other platforms.
On Friday, May 16, Spotify finally responded to this backlash by partly rolling back the feature. The platform said that plays would only be displayed if the podcast reaches certain benchmarks. If a podcast has reached 50,000 listens, it will be marked as such until it reaches figures like 100,000 and one million.
Based on the comments of Spotify’s Instagram post announcing this, it’s clear that creators were pleased with this rollback.
“Good! Literally NOBODY asked for play counts,” one wrote. “This hurts small creators.”
“We’d love just one place where we aren’t constantly chasing virality,” another said. While a third simply added: “Thank you for listening.”
