Apple launches Podcast Analytics, giving podcasters basic metrics about their shows

Apple launched a new Podcast Analytics service in beta on Thursday, giving podcasters the chance to take a look at basic metrics and trends. Available in beta, this new service was first announced during WWDC 2017.

Podcasters who have seeded their shows to iTunes (that would probably be 99.9% of podcasters out there) can now have a better understanding of their audience by getting access to basic data such as listen times and top countries.

As a podcaster, the most interesting piece of data that Podcast Analytics offers to me is the ability to see the listen time per episode, and have a look at where in an episode people skip (spoiler: they skip ads!), and how much retention we get between the first and last minute of the show. This is something that wasn’t possible up until now.

Apple notes that it is only tracking devices running iOS 11 or iTunes 12.7 or later.

As always, Apple is prioritizing privacy. As Sarah Perez notes on TechCrunch, “It’s tracking unique devices but only offering that data in aggregate to podcasters. That means show creators can understand overall trends about listeners, but can’t drill down to track users on an individual basis.

To access this data, podcasters will have to login to https://podcastsconnect.apple.com/analytics.