When Spotify podcasters work hard on a podcast, it’s only natural that they would want to receive feedback from Spotify to understand whether their audience is fully captivated.
In this article, we will discuss everything to do with what data is available to podcasters about their listeners and how exactly Spotify’s podcast rating system functions.
Here’s the Short Answer to whether Podcasters can See Who is Listening:
Spotify podcasters have access to data on the number of streams, the number of unique listeners, as well as demographics and location of listeners. The Spotify rating system and listener usernames are completely anonymous. Listeners can show their support by following their favorite podcasters.
What Data do Podcasters have About their Audience on Spotify?
In order to grow a loyal fan base as an audio content provider on Spotify’s podcasting platform, podcasters should use the data collected by Spotify’s metrics.
By using Spotify’s key metrics, podcasters have the ability to:
- Access the total number of streams of each podcast.
- Analyze audience retention in detail.
- Discover how many listeners follow their podcast channel.
Podcasters also have the ability to gain knowledge of the age, gender, and location of their monthly listeners.
Can Spotify Podcasters Track Listeners?
Spotify provides varied metrics for podcasters to analyze in order to improve their channel’s popularity and its loyal fan base.
On the ‘Artist dashboard’ podcasters are able to gauge the general demographic of their listeners.
From this dashboard, podcasters will easily be able to track the age range of their audience, their gender, and also whereabouts they are located in the world.
This is an extremely useful tool for online content creators, as they can see exactly who is tuning in and who the audience mainly consists of.
For example, knowing the geographic location of the bulk of their audience may enable creators to include more relatable content.
It may sound intrusive to hear this as a listener, but don’t worry. All personal names and even unique alphanumeric usernames will never be available in the analytic data.
Podcasters will be unable to know the actual identity of their audience and will have no way to contact them.
Spotify’s metric data also allows creators the ability to track not just how many times a podcast has been played but how many times the podcast has been started.
On the dashboard, podcasters will see 4 statistics immediately presented to them:
- The number of starts
- This relates to how many people have been interested enough to click play, regardless of whether they finished listening or not.
- The number of streams
- This is how many times a podcast has been completed.
- The number of listeners
- This allows creators to track whether a new podcast attracts more listeners.
- The number of followers
- This is the exact count of how many people have clicked ‘Follow’.
If a podcaster dives even further into the metric data, they will be able to see month-by-month how many streams and followers their channel gained.
In fact, they will also be able to see audience retention in detail and will be able to discover which part of the podcast gained the most engagement.
For example, the podcaster can observe whether people only listened for a couple of minutes, stopped listening halfway through, or actually wanted to fully complete the whole thing.
Check out our article about Spotify and storage space on your device!
Can Listeners Let Podcasters Know they’re Listening?
On Spotify, it’s true that podcasters have the ability to analyze their audience behavior, but there is no way for them to track individual listeners.
It is also not possible for listeners to contact the podcast host through the Spotify platform, nor can the host contact the listeners.
Personal communication is, for obvious reasons, not allowed as it would violate the users’ privacy and would also raise safety concerns.
Therefore, the only way that listeners can let podcasters know they’re listening is by actively engaging with their content and also clicking the ‘follow’ button to show support.
Of course, there are always other means to show support – perhaps sending your favorite podcast creator a tweet to express your dedication and love for their channel.
Can You See how Many Listeners Another Podcast has?
Unfortunately, for Spotify members, it is impossible to see how many listeners a podcaster actually has on the platform.
Unlike with musical artists, when you navigate to a podcast channel, you will not be able to see any statistics in relation to the number of active monthly listeners.
The only person who has access to this data is the host of the specific podcast or podcast channel via their individual analytic data.
Even though you can’t see how many listeners a podcast channel has, there are ways in which you can get a general idea of its popularity. Just have a look at some of these ways below:
Check the Ratings
One of the first things to do is have a look at the ratings of the podcast on Spotify.
Each podcast channel will show a rating out of 5 under their icon on the podcast channel’s home page.
You will also be able to see how many people have rated the show. It’s safe to assume that if there are more listeners, then there will be more ratings.
Have a Look at the Rankings
Another way to get an idea of how many monthly listeners a podcast has on Spotify is to check out the general rankings.
Every day Spotify creates lists of which podcasts are currently the most popular, so if a show makes it into the top charts, it’s likely to have recently gained a lot of listeners and followers.
It’s worth noting that this algorithm only picks up on how quickly shows are gaining popularity, so a relatively small podcast channel can be in the top 200 if it has managed to suddenly gain a lot of traction with its followers.
This means that the ranks may give you an idea, but it will also miss a lot of the content out there that could have thousands more listeners.
If you are keen to access Spotify podcast ranks, simply follow these steps:
- Open the Spotify app on your device.
- From the home screen, navigate to the search bar.
- Tap or click on ‘Podcasts’.
- Under the ‘Categories’ section, you will see ‘Podcast Charts’.
- Select this, and you will be given multiple charts from general top podcasts to genre-specific ranks.
Use Google Trends
Google trends is a super useful tool that anyone can use to see how often a certain word or phrase is being searched for using Google’s search engines.
“To estimate a podcast’s popularity, simply type the name of the show into the search bar. You can even add a second show to your search and directly compare their popularity within the same graph.” [Source:Podchaser.com]
[Source: Podchaser.com]
This still, however, will not tell you the exact number of listeners, but it helps give you an idea.
Please also read our article about Podcasts not playing on the Spotify desktop app.
Are Spotify Podcast Ratings Anonymous?
In 2021, Spotify launched a 5-star rating system on their platform to help users understand which shows are the most popular, allowing listeners to more efficiently choose which shows to engage in.
This 5-star rating system is completely anonymous.
Moreover, to stop any individuals purposefully ‘hating on’ certain podcasters, Spotify only allows members to rate a podcast once they have listened to a few episodes minimum.
Spotify listeners do not have the ability to leave written reviews either, they only have the choice to rate a podcast from 1-5, depending on their level of enjoyment.
Sources
A Quick Guide To Spotify’s Podcast Metrics
How to See How Many Listeners a Podcast Has – 7 Easy Methods
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