Don’t fall for the podcasting myth of “monthly downloads”

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Podcasters love their stats. I’ve previously podcasted about RSS stats, but the even more mythical number is “monthly downloads” and I’ll explain why.

WARNING: this post is long, contains simple math, and includes honest stats from my own podcasting. Do not attempt to read right after lunch.

I frequently see someone touting large monthly downloads for a podcast. In one particular case, someone even boasted going from 1,000 to 20,000 downloads per month.

That sounds impressive, doesn’t it?

Misleading math of monthly downloads

“Monthly downloads” are actually highly inaccurate. They will always be cumulative and exponential with each new episode you publish and each new subscriber you gain.

Let’s assume you start a new podcast and publish four episodes in the first month. You see a total of 1,000 downloads. But this is really 250 people who downloaded all four of your episodes.

250 new subscribers × 4 episodes = 1,000 downloads

Total: 1,000 downloads

The next month, you publish four more episodes and gain 100 new subscribers. Assuming those 100 new subscribers love you enough to download your past archive, your second month will have 1,800 downloads.

250 previous subscribers × 4 new episodes = 1,000 downloads
100 new subscribers × 4 new episodes = 400 downloads
100 new subscribers × 4 previous episodes = 400 downloads

Total: 1,800 downloads

The third month, you publish four more episodes (total of twelve) and gain another 100 new subscribers. These new subscribers also go back and download your entire archive. Now your monthly downloads will be 2,600.

350 previous subscribers × 4 new episodes = 1,400 downloads
100 new subscribers × 4 new episodes = 400 downloads
100 new subscribers × 8 previous episodes = 800 downloads

Total: 2,600 downloads

With each new episode you publish and each subscriber you gain, you exponentially increase your monthly downloads. A single new subscriber could result in 100 new downloads if they download your 100 episodes.

Monthly downloads are easy to boost

Want to take 1,000 downloads per month to 20,000? One way would be to produce more episodes without getting more subscribers.

250 subscribers × 80 new episodes = 20,000 downloads
No additional subscribers
No downloads of previous episodes

Total: 20,000 downloads

Although this seems ridiculous to produce 80 new episodes in a month, it would boost your monthly downloads, all without adding even one new subscriber—you still have the same 250.

But let’s be more reasonable and mix it up. You producing more episodes, get more subscribers, and convince new subscribers to download previous episodes (you already have 50).

250 subscribers × 25 new episodes (one each weekday) = 6,250 downloads
200 new subscribers × 25 new episodes = 5,000 downloads
175 of the new subscribers × 50 previous episodes = 8,750 downloads

Total: 20,000 downloads

The more episodes you have, the higher your monthly downloads will look. But monthly downloads are essentially meaningless.

My own real stats exposed

Let’s use my complete Noodle.mx Network stats. In January, 2013, I had about 124,000 unique downloads (I could inflate this to 151,000 by including non-unique downloads).

That sounds impressive! But let’s digest my own honest statistics.

By the end of January, 2013, I had about 450 episodes in my entire network’s archive. 124,000 divided by 450 archived episodes works out to be about 275 downloads per episode for that month.

Ouch. No longer as impressive. But that whole calculation is based on the false premise of “monthly downloads.” And that monthly number goes up every month as we release about 20 episodes per month across Noodle.mx Network.

The truth-telling podcast statistic

Now let’s consider a more accurate measurement. One of our episodes, from a month ago, now has about 7,500 unique downloads. That’s not as impressive as “124,000 monthly downloads,” but this is truthful. It indicates that about 7,500 people downloaded that one episode.

(Yes, some people will download the same episode on multiple devices, which may increase the unique downloads, but this is a minority.)

Do I have 124,000 listeners? No. I had 7,500 for one particular episode. If that stat continues as the average, then I’ll know roughly how big my audience is.

Don’t lie to advertisers

The worst way to use this inflated “monthly downloads” number is when approaching advertisers. If an advertiser sponsored all of my podcasts, they would not get 124,000 impressions unless I placed their sponsorship in all 450 of my previous episodes and had my entire audience download everything all over again.

If my podcast averages 7,500 downloads per episode after a month, then I can give an advertiser a truthful number: 30,000 impressions.

4 episodes × 7,500 listeners (1 month after publication) = 30,000 total impressions

Episode longtail

I recommend one month as the general measurement for episode stats because most of your downloads will be in that first month (mostly weighted on the first week). Depending on how timeless your content is, you may continue receiving many downloads long after the first month.

For example, I looked at one of popular podcast episodes in Noodle.mx Network from 90 days ago, and here’s how the downloads look over the last 90 days.

You can see the rapid falloff about a week after the episode was released. The continued downloads in the time since then are indication of the episode’s longtail. I’ve heard that Grammar Girl‘s episode longtail is extremely impressive since she produces timeless, valuable content that is easy to consume (about 5 minutes in length).

Advanced stats would help us determine the source for those longtail downloads.

Now layer this example longtail with 450 similar episodes published a different times and you’ll see where the 124,000 downloads come from and how inaccurate the big numbers actually are.

How to track downloads

For audio and video podcasters, I recommend only two services for tracking episode downloads:

LibSyn

LibSyn provides media hosting with basic stats starting at $5 per month. They can be your one-stop shop for podcast media hosting (audio or video), podcast website, syndication to iTunes and other podcast directories, and even iOS and Android apps. You can also use LibSyn as just your media host and power everything else from a separate podcast website using WordPress (my recommendation).

Downloads will be tracked no matter how you link to your media files hosted on LibSyn, because the tracking is built into the hosting.

Get your first month free with LibSyn if you use my affiliate code “noodle” when you sign up for any plan.

Blubrry

Blubrry provides free basic stats, premium stats for $5 per month (or $50 per year), and media hosting with premium stats for $12 per month. They are the easiest media host if you don’t want to leave your WordPress interface. I also like their media stats system the best. You can integrate Blubrry’s free or premium media stats on any media hosted anywhere (including LibSyn).

Blubrry works by adding an extra part to your media URL http://media.blubrry.com/[YOUR UNIQUE ID]/p/[PATH TO YOUR MEDIA FILE]. Downloads will be tracked anywhere you link to your media file with this full URL.

Blubrry’s PowerPress podcasting plugin for WordPress will appropriately adjust your podcast media URLs on your website and in our RSS feed so they will be tracked.

Start telling the truth

Most of you aren’t intentionally deceiving or inflating your numbers. But as podcasters, especially with other podcasters, we need to be honest and accurate.

I recommend that we drop the “monthly downloads” number in the same trash can as “RSS subscribers.”