They Just Changed What a 'Play' Means In Podcasting. Did You Notice?

Somebody just moved the goalposts on podcast metrics. And most podcasters didn’t even notice.

The Alliance for Measurement in Podcasting — AMP — has defined a new cross-platform standard for what counts as a ‘play.’ Spotify has already adopted it.

In this episode, Neal breaks down what this actually means for indie podcasters — why your dashboard numbers are about to look fairly different, why that doesn’t mean your show is doing better, and why optimising for any play-count threshold is optimising for the wrong thing.

You’ll hear:

— What AMP is and why they’re trying to standardise this

— What is ‘intentional consumption’ in Spotify’s words, and what that actually means

— Why Apple’s definition is still extraordinary (and not in a good way)

— The one metric that actually tells you if your show is working

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Did you hear that sound?

That was the sound of somebody just massively moving the goalposts

around podcast measurement.

And the funny thing is, when it happened, most podcasters didn't even

look up from their hosting dashboard, or they were too busy being distracted

over debates around the efficacy of short-form clips for growing a podcast,

or whether a podcast is even a podcast if it doesn't have an RSS feed.

But back to the main point There's this group called the Alliance for

Measurement in Podcasting, AMP, and they've been working on a cross-platform

standard for how plays get counted.

You know, so that when Spotify says you had 20,000 plays, and Apple Podcasts

says something very different, and YouTube says something else entirely,

there might actually be one shared definition underneath all of it.

That sounds reasonable.

I mean, that sounds like the kind of boring but necessary

work the industry actually needs.

And then you look at what they actually define to play as 30 seconds

of continuous streaming, not 60, 30.

Spotify's already adopted it.

They've updated their creator dashboard and everything.

So as of right now, if someone opens your episode on Spotify and listens for

31 seconds before going back to whatever they were doing before, well, that counts.

That's a play The creator gets the dopamine.

But we need to talk about what this actually means for you and your podcast

Hello, this is Podmastery, podcasting insights for indie creators.

I'm Neal Veglio, the podmaster, and each episode I'm doing all I can to

help you achieve podmastery and get better results from your podcast.

Let's be fair for a second before I get into why this AMP measurement story

deserves way more skepticism than it's currently getting, particularly from

so-called podcasting experts on LinkedIn who seemingly haven't dug deeper than

the headlines on this particular one

The reason AMP exists is a genuine problem.

Right now, a download means something very different depending

on which hosting platform you're on.

A play means something different depending on which app your listener uses.

And for years, the IAB standard defined a play as 60 seconds.

Apple Podcasts, and this is extraordinary by the way, defines

a play as any listening that lasts more than zero seconds.

Zero.

I.e., you open the file from the RSS feed through their app and then close it

again immediately, and Apple counts that.

Someone pressed play by accident.

while their phone was in their pocket So yes, a standard

is better than no standard.

I'm gonna grant that one without argument.

But here's what I want you to notice about this 30 seconds thing specifically.

Spotify's justification for it was that 30 seconds is, and I'm

quoting here, "A reliable indicator of intentional consumption."

Their phrase, their thinking, intentional consumption.

so what they've essentially said is if you listen for half

a minute, you chose to be there.

And I can see the logic of that.

Someone who hits play and then immediately closes it, well, that's noise.

But someone who's still there at 30 seconds made a deliberate choice.

But here's what 30 seconds of continual playing is not.

It's not someone who heard your hook.

It's not someone who stuck around for your argument.

It's not someone who got any value from your episode at all.

In fact, it's probably not even somebody that's gone beyond the pre-roll ad

If you're hosted by Acast or any other similar platform that plays their ads

at the beginning of your content It is at its most generous someone who

decided they hadn't yet heard enough to make them want to leave, and that

gets counted exactly the same as someone who listened to 45 minutes

Now, why does this matter for you as a podcaster who isn't hosting through

Acast, probably isn't running pre-roll ads, and doesn't have a brand team

obsessing over impression metrics?

Well, it matters for two reasons.

First of all, your numbers are about to look different.

If you've been comparing your performance against previous episodes or against

industry benchmarks, or even against what your hosting platform has been

telling you, well, you may see a big difference in your stats, not because

your show's changed in any way, because what they're counting has changed.

Secondly, and this is the one I care way more about, if you start optimizing

for this metric, you are going to be optimizing for the wrong thing.

30-second plays are a vanity metric, pure and simple.

The number that actually tells you whether your show is working is

retention, how far through your episodes people are actually listening,

And Apple Podcasts and Spotify will give you that data, at least in aggregate

form, and that's the number to care about

You just got to dig a bit deeper to find it.

So I'll say this plainly.

If someone consistently listens to 70 or 80% of your episodes, that

is worth more than any amount of play counts of any description.

That means that person's engaged.

That person might be the kind of person that would take action on something

you suggest or recommend you know, like clicking an affiliate link or buying

something that you've been paid to promote More importantly, that person might

also tell someone else about your show.

but someone who hit play and was still there at 31 seconds because they were

looking for the skip button and couldn't get to it two seconds sooner, well,

that person is not your audience There's still the question of Apple Podcasts,

and James Cridland pointed it out on the most recent episode of Podnews Weekly

Review at the time of recording this.

He said, "Apple Podcasts is now the third most popular podcast app."

Third, no longer first or even second, and they're the outlier on all this.

Apple still counts a play as any duration greater than zero seconds, which means

every accidental tap, every pocket play, every person who opened your show

and immediately went, "Nah, this isn't for me," well, Apple counts those.

The industry apparently needs Apple to come on board for this standard to mean

anything at a cross-platform level, and Apple hasn't indicated any intention

to do so yet, which means right now the same show might have one set of numbers

in Spotify's dashboard and a completely different set in Apple Podcasts Connect,

and neither of them is telling you what you probably think they're telling you

This has always been true, by the way.

The idea that podcast metrics are reliable, comparable, or particularly

meaningful has always been a sort of fan fiction that the industry maintains

to keep advertisers comfortable.

What's changed is that at least part of the industry is now

trying to make it less fictional.

So that's not nothing.

But don't mistake progress on the metric for the metric suddenly becoming good.

They are not the same thing.

If this has got you thinking about whether your own podcast success is

being measured correctly or whether you've been staring at the wrong numbers

entirely, there are a few ways to dig deeper with me, and one of those is to

head to podmastery.co and click Need Help, and then we can figure out what's

actually going on with your show and tailor the advice for your specific show

I'm Neal Veilleux.

Thanks for listening, and until the next episode, good luck with your

continuing efforts to attain podmastery