I'm Danny Brown and you're listening to One Minute Podcast Tips, the show that helps you be a better podcaster in just a minute a week. If you want more specific tips just for you and your podcast, check out the Magic Mic membership at oneminutepodcasttips.com forward slash support. And now, this week's episode. One of the questions I see getting asked a lot online is what's the difference between a download,
a listen, and a follower. So let's break that down. For a download, it depends on whether the platform is IAB Certified or not. The IAB, or the Interactive Advertising Bureau, is the industry standard for podcast analytics and measurement. When it comes to a download, this means one of
two things. If a hosting platform is IAB Certified, a download is when someone presses play on an app or a web player and listens for at least 60 seconds, or downloads enough data to their device to listen back for at least 60 seconds afterwards. If a host isn't IAB Certified or is IAB Compliant, which are different guidelines than being certified, then they might use the IAB guidelines as a starting point, but have a different way of reporting and measuring analytics.
Now, when it comes to Spotify for Podcasters and Apple Podcasts, there are some differences. Spotify for Podcasters, which is the reporting dashboard for Spotify, and Podcasts Connect, which is Apple's podcaster dashboard, has slightly different metrics. Spotify has Starts, which is zero seconds and over, and Streams, which is anything for at least 60 seconds, so closer to the IAB definition.
Podcasts Connect has Plays, which is greater than zero seconds, and Engaged Listeners, so when someone's listened to at least 20 minutes or 40% of an episode within a single session. Both of these metrics, especially the streams and engaged listeners, are a good measurement of actual listeners. This is because you can have a download that isn't listened to, so auto-download on a podcast app, for example, a bot, automated scripts, etc., so metrics around actual listen time are more valuable.
It's why you have the likes of average consumption on Apple Podcasts, consumption hours on Spotify for Podcasters, and why we offer a consumption percentage at Captivate, where I'm Head of Podcaster Support and Experience. These stats show you how much of an episode is being listened to and where drop-off is happening, etc. So you can then look to see why and then optimize your content based on that data.
Followers are what used to be subscribers, and these are listeners who have moved from just listening and now subscribe to your podcast, so they get each new episode as soon as it's released. So hopefully that's helped identify the difference between downloads, listens, and followers, and made things a little bit clearer for you. Until the next time, happy podcasting. Thanks for listening. If you enjoy One Minute Podcast Tips, be sure to share with your friends
and other podcasters so they can enjoy it too. Until the next time, happy podcasting. ♪♪♪