Spotify announced last week that he would implement public games on all podcasts as a way to “help attract new fans”. But the Podcaster quickly responded with the criticisms of the new feature, mainly, which will further promote Podcasts that already have a vast audience, making smaller shows less attractive for new listeners.
Friday, Spotify changed its course on its plans, but did not completely avoid the idea. Now, the game counts will only appear on shows with at least 50,000 games each. Instead of showing an exact game count, the designation will update only on specific goals, such as 100,000 or 1 million games.
“We plan to launch this version of Play just evolved during the next week,” wrote the company in a blog post. “This update reflects our evolving efforts to provide the best intuitions for creators and a clear experience for their fans.”
For decades, Podcast hosting platforms did not share many public indicators of the popularity of a show: Apple’s podcasts, for example, had reviews and graphics on his app, but it would be difficult for a listener to know if a show had an audience in the tens or tens of thousands.
Although Spotify take the angle that this ambiguity is damage, the creators have been attracted by the podcasting medium in part because it is pleasantly different from other forms of online average. When someone clicks on playing on a YouTube video, for example, they are approaching the media with the existing knowledge of how many views the video has and how many people have enrolled in that channel. But podcasting can level the playing field for other niche creators.
Podcaster also expressed frustration due to the lack of a clear metric for what matters as a “game” or a “flow” between various different platforms.
The interactive advertising office (IAB) works with podcast platforms to establish a clear metric for what is defined as a “game”, creating more consistency for the creation of podcaster and advertisers. But according to Podnews, the definition of what matters as a “game” is different on Spotify and YouTube – two of the most popular podcast listening platforms – compared to the IAB standard.
Spotify said that the game counts will refer to the number of times in which “people have actively tried” the content, while flows and downloads count only after 60 seconds of involvement.
