Spotify responds to backlash over public podcast play counts

Spotify announced last week that it would roll out public play counts on all podcasts as a way of “helping attract new fans.” But podcasters swiftly responded with criticism of the new feature — mainly, that it would further promote podcasts that already have large audiences while making smaller shows less appealing to new listeners.

On Friday, Spotify changed course on its plans, but did not completely eschew the idea. Now, play counts will only appear on shows with at least 50,000 plays each. Instead of showing an exact play count, the designation will only update at specific milestones, like 100,000 or 1 million plays.

“We plan to roll this newly evolved version of play counts over the coming week,” the company wrote in a blog post. “This update reflects our evolving efforts to provide the best insights for creators and a clear experience for their fans.”

For decades, podcast hosting platforms have not shared many public indicators of a show’s popularity — Apple Podcasts, for example, has had reviews and charts on its app, but it would be challenging for a listener to know if a show had an audience in the tens or the tens of thousands.

Though Spotify takes the angle that this ambiguity is a detriment, creators have been drawn to the podcasting medium in part because it’s refreshingly different from other forms of online media. When someone clicks play on a YouTube video, for example, they are approaching the media with the existing knowledge of how many views the video has, and how many people have subscribed to that channel. But podcasting can level the playing field for more niche creators.

Podcasters have also expressed frustration with the lack of a clear metric for what counts as a “play” or a “stream” among various different platforms.

The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) works with podcast platforms to establish a clear metric for what is defined as a “play,” creating more consistency for dealmaking among podcasters and advertisers. But according to Podnews, the definition of what counts as a “play” is different on Spotify and YouTube — two of the most popular podcast listening platforms — than the IAB standard.

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Spotify said that play counts will refer to the number of times “people actively tried” the content, whereas streams and downloads only count after 60 seconds of engagement.