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How to figure out # of Podcast listeners?

by canard5
9 replies
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Hey folks,

I co-host a podcast, but the problem is we don't know how many listeners we have.

The podcast has been running for several years, but do to recent success we've been curious about how many listeners tune into each episode.

Does anyone know a way to figure this number out?
  • Profile picture of the author LP Copywriter
    I guess it depends on how you distribute it, but couldn't you just see how many times the file was accessed?
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    • Profile picture of the author canard5
      Originally Posted by LP Copywriter View Post

      I guess it depends on how you distribute it, but couldn't you just see how many times the file was accessed?
      I'm not entirely sure. But we have it on itunes, we have it streaming on the site, and we have an rss feed so I'm not sure how to measure all that.

      I won't lie I'm not too familiar with all this so there may be a very simple answer. One that will make me look quite stupid, but that's alright as long as I can figure it out.
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  • Profile picture of the author LP Copywriter
    I'm no expert in this area, but the RSS likely pulls the file from your site, and iTunes listeners would access the podcast via Apple's servers, correct? I'd simply add up the file downloads from your own analytics, and add the numbers that iTunes provides to that.

    There's got to be some kind of tool for this, right?
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    • Profile picture of the author canard5
      As I understand it, most people use feedburner to measure how many subscribers they have, but this only works if it's set up from the beginning. Unfortunately ours was not so if we activated it know we would only be measuring how many people subscribe from this point on. Not good.

      That's my understanding. I could be wrong.
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  • Profile picture of the author seasoned
    rss and feedburner really have nothing to do with it, any more than TV guide has to do with how many people watch TV. You should be able to have the code to stream your files tell you how many have accessed from there. opefully, itunes can tell you from there. After all, WHO CARES how many KNOW about the feeds!? AC NEILSEN doesn't care about that for TV! It is how many LISTEN! And you can't listen to RSS feeds.

    Now that I think about it, even ITUNES might not matter! I think all te sites I went to fed their own.

    Steve
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  • Profile picture of the author HorseStall
    It is difficult to get an accurate figure of listeners, your best bet is if you host your own file (even when you post to directories) the number of times the file is accessed gives you a starting point. Keep in mind people may redistribute or not listen at all, so it should only be used as a reference point.
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    • Profile picture of the author seasoned
      Originally Posted by HorseStall View Post

      It is difficult to get an accurate figure of listeners, your best bet is if you host your own file (even when you post to directories) the number of times the file is accessed gives you a starting point. Keep in mind people may redistribute or not listen at all, so it should only be used as a reference point.
      That is ANOTHER point! feedburner may give ONE website a file! They may distribute it to 50 websites which may distribute it to 50,000,000 people. Out of those 50,000,000 people, only TEN may ask for a file! You can see how the rss feeds have NO relation to the actual numbers. BTW my numbers above might be earily accurate. It really DOES work like that.

      BTW if you have a URL, and 10 people download it, and they share with 1000 people, and 500 install it, and subscribe, they will pull the files and you will get the ones that got it from a person that got it from a website that downloaded from another website that got it from you!

      Steve
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      • Profile picture of the author canard5
        I wish there was a listen counter next to the playback button on the site, much like the view count on a blog.
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  • Profile picture of the author TryBPO
    We use LibSyn for distribution and they give us stats as to how many times the episodes have been downloaded. I can tell by day, month, year, etc. exactly how many downloads we've had and/or how many times the file has been accessed.
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