Spotify Analytics Only Show Spotify Plays
Podcast creators are experiencing significant challenges with distribution across platforms (Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube), inconsistent analytics, and unexpected issues like bot comments and feed discrepancies. The fragmented ecosystem and platform-specific quirks create a frustrating and time-consuming experience for those trying to reach and understand their audience.
SOURCES (60)
“Maybe other here can confirm this, but it’s my understanding that if you have too long a gap between episodes, Apple Podcasts might stop automatically downloading new episodes for your listeners. If that’s true, then it’s another reason to be consistent.”
“Does Buzzsprout tell you how much bandwidth your show is using per month? Having that information might make it easier for you to find an alternative solution, as different podcast hosting services have different policies when it comes to bandwidth and what they may charge. (Disclosure: I work with the Blubrry support team.)”
“Literal zero or like a really low number. Is your RSS feed set being sent out Apple, Spotify, etc? Because zero downloads after 3 weeks is not unheard of but kind of points to a tech problem.”
“Description The "Shows for you" section on the "Listen Now" screen displays podcast shows that appear empty or non functional. Steps to reproduce 1. Open the app and go to "Listen Now" 2. Scroll down to the "Shows for you" section 3. Select a podcast show (e.g. "The Essential" by Will Media) 4. The show opens but displays "No tracks here" — no episodes available Expected behavior The podcast show should load and display the available episodes. Actual behavior The show opens but is empty ("No tra”
“when views drop off like that its usually either the algorithm stopped pushing you or your release schedule changed. did anything shift around the time it happened, like upload frequency or title/thumbnail style?”
“Are you only on YouTube? I’ve heard that lots of people on YouTube are getting less plays. They change something on their end and all views have dropped.”
“I was on Acast for two years and never had a single issue. I was never flagged and they have humans who write to you regarding such issues if they ever arise before flatly cutting your monetization. I have never heard of this type of issue on Acast. I liked Acast a lot, I only left bc my Pod was picked up by a network.”
“I saw it at 40 RPM before but it’s at 5.6 RPM now. Might’ve been a glitch or temporary measure. We just got started monetizing the past 2 months. I assume acast gets you in that ballpark easily?”
“Are these ads host-read or programmatic? Because NOBODY is getting 40 CPM on programmatic.”
“Yo grabo con AC encendido y uso Adobe Podcast para limpiar el ruido y si aun sigue, le meto un poco de música para ocultarlo.”
“Try Uppbeat.io. It's reputable sight for music from independent creators. I've used them across all the podcasts I've produce for years without any issues.”
“Noted. Going through your story on your profile. Makes sense, thanks! Duly noted. Does acast pay similar CPM as Spotify? Spotify is paying 40ish CPM which would be only hesitance in switching. Thanks again for your detailed response sir! Am strongly considering moving to acast asap and am mentally preparing for potentially losing out on months of revenue.”
“We aren’t paying anyone. We have super loyal fans who tune in and share our content but no bots or any external payment for engagement. Hoping that it’s a false flagging of our AI generated intro music (only used AI to avoid being flagged every episode for using real music with permission which has happened before).”
“They usually do that if they think you're using bots to inflate views. If you're paying for podcast promotion of any kind you may want to look into the methods being used to promote engagement.”
“the inconsistency is the worst part tbh, if it was always slow at least youd know what to expect”
“Yeah, makes sense if you want to get those live a bit faster. I know that we submit the transcripts via feeds and it's generally reliable”
“Thank you. My last episode I submitted a trouble ticket with Apple after the transcript was missing after 3 or 4 days... then it appeared a day or two later... but no formal response to the ticket.”
“If your RSS feed includes the transcript's VTT file - it normally takes (up to) 1-2 days to appear on Apple Podcasts. There are some delays and inconsistencies but generally works well. Does your feed support that in the `<podcast:transcript>` tag? Disclosure - I'm the founder of Beamly”
“You can go round the queue. Apple accepts a transcript you supply yourself in the feed, the podcast:transcript tag from the 2.0 namespace, VTT or SRT. When one's there it uses yours instead of generating its own, so it's live with the episode rather than whenever their processing gets to it. Most hosts have a field for it now, a few will attach it automatically if you upload the file with the episode.”
“That lag has been all over the place for months now, some episodes pop up with a transcript in hours and others just sit there blank for weeks. Seems completely random from what I can tell, like their processing queue just gets stuck on certain files”
“Is anyone else seeing their podcasts on Apple Podcasts get posted, but transcripts for the podcast not showing up for many days later? I've seen that Apple says that it can take a day or two before transcripts are posted, but I had an episode posted last week, and 7 days later there's still no transcript. submitted by /u/Timely_Event_7680 [link] [comments]”
“Spotify suddenly suspended our podcast monetization with no specific reason. Has anyone dealt with this? Our podcast was just suspended from Spotify for Creators monetization/payments, and we’re trying to figure out what triggered it. The email says: “Our automated review tools determined that your show violates the Spotify for Creators Terms and Conditions… your payments have been suspended for violating the Spotify Monetization Guidelines.” That’s all the information they gave us. No specific”
“I’m interested. I’d like to track my stuff, but not in several different apps. Is it iOS or Android or web or what? And is the intent to have it eventually be yet another subscription service? Thanks in advance for your cool looking work!”
“I am able to confirm that all the users complaining have Spotify installed. I removed it from one and they are no longer having issues. I installed Spotify on my device and started having issues. Issues went away after I uninstalled. Thank you u/Ray-barns !”
“I'm glad that will work for you! Yes, if you don't want your podcast publicly listed in catalogs, this method will work—at least on Apple's mobile devices. I reported this macOS bug (and mentioned the need to test on Windows) to a friend in the Apple Podcasts team. So maybe even the macOS side will be fixed soon. (Moderator-required disclosure: I host The Audacity to Podcast ®, a podcast about podcasting ; run the Podgagement® (formerly My Podcast Reviews) service to help you engage”
“The Froze Bros [Explicit] The World’s #1 Comedy Podcast About Frozen Food Apple | Spotify | YouTube | Amazon | Podbean | Website | Instagram | Facebook | Reddit | Tips Pillsbury, Oh Boy! Pillsbury Toaster Scrambles with Bacon (Ep 81) The Doughboy's off to school, and so are the Bros. This week: Pillsbury Toaster Scrambles pastries with bacon, reviewed just in time for back-to-school breakfasts. The story: Charles Pillsbury bought a one-third stake in a Minneapolis flour mill in 1869 (dethron”
“I just tested this and indeed it does work on iOS/iPadOS! That’s very good news, most users are on mobile devices anyway. Background: I do not want my private podcast listed on Apple Spotify Amazon etc, I just want to create a one-click link to subscribe to it in the Podcasts app, so users don’t need to manually enter the feed URL. An app like Overcast also has this feature in their custom URL scheme.”
“"It does not work on macOS" Oh yes it does! (Oh - actually - no, it doesn't. It opens Apple Podcasts, but just gives you a box to type in an RSS feed. You're right.) Moderator-required disclosure: I do a lot of things too, most notably edit Podnews”
“Let's back up. What are you actually trying to accomplish? Do you really want a direct-to-RSS link that works only in Apple Podcasts and bypasses your Apple Podcasts listing, thus now allowing ratings, reviews, ranking, or related podcasts? Or do you just want a link directly to your podcast listing? If you really want the RSS-only option, yes, podcast://example.com/rss.xml will work to manually follow the RSS feed in Apple Podcasts but only through iOS/iPadOS. It does not work on macOS, and”
“I don't want it to be crawled and approved by Apple, just the link directly opened in Podcasts so users do not to have to input the URL manually. Seems odd there's no way to do this.”
“That's not what I want though, going through Apple's servers (or Spotify, Amazon, etc). Very annoying, since Overcast does allow this in their URL scheme: overcast://x-callback-url/add?url=https://example.com/rss.xml . Bizarre that after 22 years there's still no standard for this, and we're still manually copy/pasting URLs, or need to go through gatekeepers.”
“i just went through this a week ago setting up my own rss feed and it drove me crazy. the podcast:// scheme in apple podcasts is basically just a launcher for the "add a show by url" dialog, it doesn't auto-subscribe what you actually want is an itunes link with the feed encoded. try ` https://podcasts.apple.com/podcast/id0000000000\` replacing the zeros with your show's apple id. if you don't have one yet you can generate it through apple podcasts connect with your rss url”
“Update to my original question. If I start a separate ad-free feed on Patreon (which seems to be the best way forward in my case) could this be a good solution? I.e. syncing both feeds on Spotify. https://support.patreon.com/hc/en-us/articles/35332949768717-Spotify-Synced-Feeds-for-Patreon-creators Yes there would be duplicate epiosodes, but I'll label the Patreon ones 'ad-free'. At least it's not two separate podcasts.”
“Patreon will sync whatever audio your host exposes, ads included. i'd either create a separate ad-free RSS or move the member feed to another host.”
“Patreon can sync your existing public RSS into the same show. then post bonus episodes on Patreon with Add to podcast on, and member feeds get both based on access.”
“i'd publish Monday, not Tuesday. use the extra day to confirm the feed is live in Apple and Spotify before episode 1.”
“Are you sure? I've got two "shows" (one is the actual show, the other is just old interviews) on one account. There's also no limit on the number of episodes. The free tier does limit size of uploads to below 100MB, IIRC. You're right about the analytics, though. Very barebones, but for free, it's decent. It also gets you on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, so there's that going for it... Oh... and no ads unless you decide to monetize.”
“Have you considered Spotify? Their hosting is free (currently), plus you can publish video on their native player. And with a little registration work, you will be on all other podcast platforms too via Spotify. I was on Spotify for over two years and was pleased with the service. That said, I just switched to Acast myself, as the bar for monetisation is lower there. But their free plan is nothing to write home about, with a 5-episode limit unless you get monetised and very limited functionality”
“before using Riverside, i'd confirm it can import all 12 episodes and later 301 redirect the RSS feed elsewhere. that's the part that prevents lock-in.”
“Honestly, Spotify for Creators is free and will distribute your podcast via RSS to all of the other platforms as well. It's also unlimited bandwidth, their abilities have vastly improved over the past few years and they also have a partner program for montization, but I prefer to handle that part myself with business contacts I have. But, that's mostly a "me" thing and I suppose it works for some, but we don't use it.”
You can also just say Hey Alexa play “X” podcast on iHeart radio
“Related test case: Priority: P2 Platforms: Web Environment: Safari, macOS Steps to reproduce 1. Click an episode. 2. Click the 5 stars to open the Rate this series box. 3. Select a star rating. 4. Attempt to cancel or remove the rating. Expected result Add a Remove rating button to the Rate this series pop up box so users can remove their submitted rating. Actual result Once a rating is selected, it can be edited but can't be removed. Evidence Quick sketch of what might this look like. <img widt”
“one thing worth checking, did anything change with your episode formatting or file size around August 5? sometimes a single malformed episode can cause a platform's crawler to stop pulling new entries entirely. if so, re-publishing that episode might unstick things”
“agreed, the re-sync thing is almost always the fix when other platforms show them fine”
“thank you. have tried that but no luck. after 65 minutes with Spotify online help they said the episodes are somehow internally tagged "employees only" and they are escalating the problem ...”
“If they show up on Apple and Pocket Casts but not Spotify it's probably a caching issue on their end, especially if the custom links are dead too. I'd try re-submitting the RSS feed through the Spotify for Podcasters dashboard or toggling the episode visibility settings off and back on. Sometimes Spotify just needs a little nudge to re-sync everything”
“Hi all, I have a small language learning podcast and a (would be) listener just alerted me that they can't see the first 15 episodes on Spotify which is a problem because I usually advise beginners to start from Season 1. I can see these episodes on Apple and on Pocket Casts but no matter how I filter episodes on Spotify they don't show up. I'm hosting the show on Spotify and if I use the custom link to these episodes it just comes up with a "podcast not found" message. I d”
“Thank you for this information. I was wondering what was going on with my numbers. I feel there is still some bugs in reporting. I seem to have one episode that has shown almost no listens while I watch new listeners go through all the episodes. Fingers crossed it is resolved soon, if not already.”
“An update. This support ticket has remained open with Libsyn for 23 days and counting. I had to delete my video episode files and upload audio files in order for my latest episodes to even show up on Spotify. It's as if the video format episodes didn't even exist on Spotify. Now that also breaks my video format episodes on Apple Podcasts, since I'm only able to use audio files for episodes on Libsyn. For now, I'm just using audio format on Libsyn, and directly uploading the video”
“Had the same thing happen with my show. It’s been really fun trying to explain that to one of the grant funders of the show.”
“☝️ that’s the way to go. 3rd season coming up, and I rarely get above 100 views. Who cares.”
“At a glance, I don't see anything wrong with your feed from around then. Did you also contact Buzzsprout for support? (Moderator-required disclosure: I host The Audacity to Podcast ®, a podcast about podcasting ; run the Podgagement® (formerly My Podcast Reviews) service to help you engage your audience and grow your podcast; created PodChapters® for transcribing and chaptering podcasts; offer consulting and education services to podcasters; curate podcast data for Podcast Industry Insights™”
“Checked my website numbers and that’s what triggered me to think something was off. Traffic numbers were low compared to episodes downloaded”
“Hello. I’m just suggesting that the total amount of downloads has not actually changed. Just the number being reported in the dashboard. Everyone can still hear your show. It isn’t accurate to say that downloads are plummeting - just that your numbers have been affected. That’s all I’m saying. My coverage is here - https://podnews.net/update/pmnyc26-schedule#story2 For the avoidance of doubt: Podbean is one of more than 100 supporters of my newsletter. I do not give any of those supporters speci”