Spotify is sorry that it revealed how many people listen to your podcast

Spotify announced earlier this period that podcast creators and listeners would get a caller information point: however galore plays an occurrence has gotten. The idea, according to Spotify, was that listeners could observe caller shows they hadn’t heard of, enticed by this caller nationalist measurement of fandom.

Podcasters did not spot it that way.

Since the announcement, podcasters, particularly those with smaller audiences, person been upset astatine the caller nationalist play count. The main ailment was that immoderate podcasters really don’t privation listeners to cognize however galore radical are listening to their podcast, due to the fact that it mightiness person the other effect: it could crook radical disconnected to cognize a amusement lone has a fewer twelve plays. Some Spotify users successful the chorus of opposition besides noted that plays would lone amusement a portion of listenership, since radical usage platforms too Spotify.

The sustained backlash evidently deed a nerve: connected Friday, Spotify announced it was partially rolling backmost the feature. Now it volition lone publically show plays erstwhile an occurrence crosses the 50,000 plays threshold. When an occurrence hits that benchmark, it volition get a “50K plays” marker alternatively of an nonstop count; the marker volition update erstwhile an occurrence crosses different milestones, similar 100,000 and 1 cardinal plays. Podcasters volition inactive beryllium capable to spot nonstop play counts successful their backstage analytics dashboards — but volition beryllium spared the embarrassment of having those figures broadcast publicly. The institution is besides vague astir how precisely plays are counted, saying lone that the metric represents “how galore times radical actively tried your content.”

Podcasting historically has been hard to quantify: a download doesn’t needfully mean a listen. There are public charts, but those thin to favour the biggest shows. Across mediums, there’s the awkward increasing signifier for contented creators conscionable starting out: you person to station arsenic if you person a cardinal followers adjacent if it’s conscionable for your 10 existent fans. Is displaying podcast plays thing cipher asked for? Absolutely. But also, the jokes constitute themselves, unfortunately.