Spotify made podcast play counts public — creators didn’t prefer it

Spotify introduced earlier this month that podcast creators and listeners would get a brand new knowledge level: what number of performs an episode has gotten. The concept, in response to Spotify, was that listeners might uncover new reveals they hadn’t heard of, enticed by this new public measure of fandom.

Podcasters didn’t see it that means.

Because the announcement, podcasters, particularly these with smaller audiences, have been upset on the new public play rely. The chief criticism was that some podcasters truly don’t need listeners to understand how many individuals are listening to their podcast, as a result of it might need the other impact: it might flip individuals off to know a present solely has a number of dozen performs. Some Spotify customers within the refrain of opposition additionally famous that performs would solely present a slice of listenership, since individuals use platforms moreover Spotify.

The sustained backlash evidently hit a nerve: on Friday, Spotify introduced it was partially rolling again the characteristic. Now it would solely publicly show performs as soon as an episode crosses the 50,000 performs threshold. When an episode hits that benchmark, it would get a “50K performs” marker as an alternative of a precise rely; the marker will replace when an episode crosses different milestones, like 100,000 and 1 million performs. Podcasters will nonetheless have the ability to see actual play counts of their non-public analytics dashboards — however might be spared the embarrassment of getting these figures broadcast publicly. The corporate can be obscure about how precisely performs are counted, saying solely that the metric represents “what number of occasions individuals actively tried your content material.”

Podcasting traditionally has been laborious to quantify: a obtain doesn’t essentially imply a pay attention. There are public charts, however these are likely to favor the most important reveals. Throughout mediums, there’s the awkward rising stage for content material creators simply beginning out: it’s a must to publish as in case you have one million followers even when it’s simply on your 10 precise followers. Is displaying podcast performs one thing no person requested for? Completely. But additionally, the jokes write themselves, sadly.