Libsyn and SoundCloud are both great podcast hosting companies. The reason we set up both is because we like to have redundancy in our system. If one of the hosting companies stop working, the other is still there to provide the podcast to the audience.
We like the SoundCloud media player for blog content because it is a mobile friendly media player. That just means that people can listen to your podcast via your blog post by clicking the play button.
Libsyn is great because they have a lot of podcast specific tools that aren’t the core focus of SoundCloud.
How Podcast Statistics are Counted
Here are some case examples of different downloads:
- First, we start with a new show so there are no download statistics:
iTunes = 0 | Libsyn = 0 | SoundCloud = 0
- Someone plays your podcast on an embedded Libsyn media player. The download statistics are as follows:
iTunes = 0 | Libsyn = 1 | SoundCloud = 0
- Next, someone plays your podcast on an embedded SoundCloud media player
iTunes = 0 | Libsyn = 1 | SoundCloud = 1
- Now, someone plays your podcast in iTunes:
iTunes = 1 | Libsyn = 2 | SoundCloud = 1
Why does this matter?
We find that the podcasts which get the most downloads on the iTunes platform have a tendency to rank higher than the podcasts that don’t. For that reason, it makes sense to ask your audience specifically to download your show from the iTunes platform. If your existing audience regularly visits your website to download your show, iTunes won’t be aware of the downloads that your podcast serves. If you can run that stream of downloads through the iTunes platform, you might get into the What’s Hot category or Top Podcasts list. This sort of attention can help expand your message to a greater audience.
How SoundCloud Podcast Statistics Look
How Libsyn Statistics Look
Stitcher Podcast Statistics
Stitcher actually has it’s own suite of statistics that aren’t related to the above information. As a platform, Stitcher might actually have the best statistics. The user can get data on when people stop listening to your show and your completion rates. The problem is that we don’t see the majority of downloads in Stitcher. Most people listen via iTunes so we focus most of our attention there.
Thoughts?
Do you have insights into this? Please share your findings with the community below. If you link to outside information, that would be really helpful for the next podcaster seeking answers via this post.
Just an FYI The Libsyn custom player is 100% responsive and will work on a phone than all your stats would be in one place. Just an FYI
Oh awesome. Thanks for sharing.