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Plays

Warning

This pages describes an aggregation approach that is no longer used by the Bumper Dashboard. We revised our approach as a result of Spotify's plays metric (introduced May 2025).

For the current approach, please see Playback.

The Bumper Dashboard uses "plays" as a generic term to represent unique qualified play initiations of a given podcast episode. At the episode level, "plays" aggregates:

  • YouTube views
  • Spotify streams
  • "Estimated plays" in Apple Podcasts

Though not identical, these measures correspond to "qualified playback session initiations" by a viewer or listener.

Unlike verified listeners, plays are not deduplicated by user within a given time period (day/week/month). Also unlike verified listeners, plays can be summed across time.

YouTube views

YouTube does not provide detailed documentation about how video view counts are calculated. Their official documentation says:

A view occurs when a person watches your video. In order to preserve accuracy in view counts, irregular playbacks (like spam) are removed from the public view count metrics. In incrementing view count, YouTube algorithmically determines user intent.

Many industry estimates suggest:

  • A YouTube user must watch a video for a minimum of 30 seconds to increment a video's view count
  • A single user can generate multiple views per day, capped at a maximum of 4-5 views per day

The Bumper Dashboard ingests YouTube view counts directly from the YouTube Analytics API. YouTube view counts in the Bumper Dashboard should match what users see in YouTube Studio.

Spotify streams

Spotify steams are a Spotify-specific metric that counts qualified episode playback initiations. From the support article How we count plays, starts, and streams:

We count a stream every time a listener or viewer streams your show for 60 seconds or more on Spotify.

Spotify stream counts in the Bumper Dashboard should match what users see in the Spotify for Podcasters dashboard.

"Estimated plays" in Apple Podcasts

Apple Podcasts Connect does not provide an equivalent metric to YouTube views or Spotify streams. While Apple does report on plays, they measure something very different (see below).

Absent a true equivalent of YouTube views or Spotify streams, we estimate. Bumper's estimates include a few ingredients, all sourced from Apple Podcasts Connect:

  • Episode-level Apple Podcasts all-time total listeners
  • Episode-level Apple Podcasts listeners by day/week/month
  • Episode-level Apple Podcasts all-time episode retention (AKA dropoff curves)

We use episode-level retention data to estimate the percentage of listeners who spent at least 60 seconds with an episode (to match Spotify's "stream" threshold). Then we use this scaling factor to calculate all-time estimated plays per episode. The sum of estimated episode-level plays yields all-time show-level estimated plays.

For timeseries data at daily/weekly/monthly resolution, we compare the sum of daily/weekly/monthly episode listeners to the episode's all-time listener number, then we scale daily/weekly/monthly listeners by this factor, then again by the percentage of listeners who spent at least 60 seconds with an episode. The resulting estimate lets Bumper display estimated plays at both the episode-level and show-level by day, week, or month.

Frequently asked questions

Why not use Apple's play metric?

Because Apple Podcasts plays are very different from YouTube views and Spotify streams. Apple has a very specific definition for the word "play" as it appears in Apple Podcasts Connect. An episode's play count represents:

The total number of times people pressed play on your episode.

This figure includes all presses of the play button, including clicks/taps of the play button to resume playback after pausing an episode. So, if I:

  • Press play once to initiate playback of an episode
  • Pause the episode partway through
  • Press play again to resume playback of the same episode
  • Pause the episode again
  • Press play again to resume playback of the same episode

Then I am a single listener, responsible for multiple play actions.

Crucially, Apple Podcasts "play" actions count a very different thing than YouTube views or Spotify streams.

Why is historical estimated playback data missing for Apple Podcasts?

Bumper's "estimated plays by day/week/month" for Apple Podcasts relies on episode-level timeseries data. Apple Podcasts Connect makes this timerseries data available for up to 300 of the most recently-released episodes.

The episode-level and show-level all-time "estimated plays" totals include all episodes, but timeseries (by day, week, month) may not include historical data prior to the 300 most recent episodes.

This limitation also means the sum of daily/weekly/monthly "estimated plays" may not equal the all-time total displayed in the Bumper Dashboard.