Embracing Change

Apple Podcasts' Switch To Streaming Will Decimate Downloads

When Apple switches away from auto-downloads, it’ll be up to hosting companies to keep the chaos at bay by giving podcasters and advertisers a better understanding of the true size of our audiences.

March 10, 2021

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If the beta version of Apple Podcasts in iOS 14.5 is to be believed...

UPDATE AND CORRECTION: No, the beta version is not to be believed, we now know. It’s reported as a bug in the beta version and Apple claims the default “always download” functionality of Apple Podcasts will not change when the release is made public later this month. However, the implications and speculations on this action are still interesting, so I’m leaving them for you to read — Evo

...then Apple Podcasts is going to decimate your podcast’s episode downloads. If you’re lucky, it’ll only be the literal definition of decimate. Because with that release, as James Cridland discovered, Apple Podcasts will no longer auto-download podcast episodes.

If that holds true in the public release, it’ll mean a podcast measurement shake-out of a similar magnitude to the summer of 2018, when some podcasts saw their downloads drop by 50% or more. That moment of crisis was driven by podcast media companies adopting IAB 2.0 standards, which forced them to stop inflating download reports by filtering out file actions that were markedly not actual downloads.

Welcome To The Streaming World, Apple Podcasts

Briefly, here’s how Apple Podcasts works: When you subscribe to follow Podcast Pontifications on Apple Podcasts, Apple Podcasts will automatically download the audio file of the most recent episode of my show for you, storing it locally on your iOS device.

If I release an episode tomorrow, Apple Podcasts will download that episode for you. It doesn’t matter if you listened to the prior episode or not. Apple will helpfully download the next one for you.

And the next day, it’ll do the same thing. And the next day. And…

Now, at some point—I think it’s five un-listened to episodes—Apple Podcasts stops downloading and won’t resume until you’ve started listening again.

Spotify works differently. When you follow Podcast Pontifications using Spotify, no download happens without your express action. You’ll see the episodes, and you can play an episode’s audio file by streaming it. Or you can click the little down arrow inside any episode to actually download the audio file to your phone. But Spotify won’t auto-download any episode without your input.

That’s why you keep hearing how Spotify is growing bigger than Apple Podcasts, but your download report paints a very different picture.

That picture is about to get reset when Apple follows suit and switches away from auto-downloading later this month.

Brace For Impact

Every podcaster is going to be impacted by this. Starting in April, your download stats will be lower. My download stats are going to be lower. So get ready for it.

If you’re selling advertising on your show, that means your available inventory will look smaller starting next month. Not to put too fine a point on it, but that means your revenue will be impacted, as you will no longer be able to supply the same number of impressions (at least those tracked by file downloads) in the same amount of time. I genuinely feel bad for the rough weeks ahead facing those who earn a living from ad revenue generated by their podcast.

How big the drop will be is, in part, predicated on how hard you’ve pushed Apple Podcasts on your listeners. The more listeners you have accessing your show with Apple Podcasts, the bigger the drop will be. If you’ve been more agnostic when it comes to asking people to subscribe to follow your show, you might see less of an impact.

But you’re still going to see an impact.

I hate to say “I told you so”, but I told you so. Hanging our collective hats on downloads—which has little actual value to anyone—has been a weak link in our chain since inception. It’s going to be very difficult for publishers and ad rep firms to convince advertisers to part with the same amount of money while receiving less. And though they really aren’t getting less, they're perceiving the drop in downloads as less.

Live by the download sword, die by the download sword.

I’ve been in the advertising game since before the turn of the century, so trust me when I tell you that advertisers have always demanded and will always demand more accountability, visibility, proof from publishers. Podcast publishers are not immune.

Better Focus Makes All Of Podcasting Better

In the audio version of this article, I said something like “hey, no big deal if you’re not selling ads.” But on reflection, I think this is still a big deal for those of us who don’t sell ads. Not necessarily in a bad way. Just a better way.

As with the summer of 2018, this coming drop doesn’t mean suddenly fewer people are listening to your show. The coming drop doesn’t mean your audience shrank. It just means that the data you had about your audience was wrong. You’ll probably have the same people listening to your episodes the same way they did before. Now, you’ll have a more accurate picture. That seems like a Very Good Thing.

There’s a group of service providers who could soften the blow: podcast hosting companies. Specifically, podcast media hosting companies need to step up and give podcasters better data about the true size of their audience.

This is their window. They have all the info they need to give us this information right now. By smartly looking at the user-agent, IP address, and referring URL of all file requests, they could answer the questions every podcaster—and, arguably, every advertiser—wants to know: what’s the size of my audience, and is my audience growing?

Time to step up, podcast hosting companies.

In the meantime, spread the word about this coming change. Tell your podcasting peers to brace for download decimation, if they’re lucky. Please share this article with them to help them better understand the full scope of what’s about to happen.

If you loved this early heads-up from me and aren't totally defeated by the implications, please consider going to BuyMeACoffee.com/evoterra and sliding a virtual coffee my way.

I shall be back tomorrow with yet another Podcast Pontifications.

Cheers!

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Podcast Pontifications is written and narrated by Evo Terra. He’s on a mission to make podcasting better. Allie Press proofed the copy, corrected the transcript, and edited the video. Podcast Pontifications is a production of Simpler Media.

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When Apple switches away from auto-downloads, it will be up to hosting companies to keep the chaos at bay by providing podcasters and advertisers a better understanding of the true size of our audiences.

Hello, and welcome to another Podcast Pontifications with me, Evo Terra.

In case you hadn't heard the news, this Apple iOS 14.5 beta just keeps a on giving amazing things. It's going to, if the beta version is to be accepted and believed, Apple Podcasts will no longer automatically download podcast episodes.

That is both fantastic and terrifying because without the auto-downloads, Apple's numbers, the number of times Apple Podcasts downloads your podcast's episodes will drop. Yep. It will drop because right now it's automatically downloading. That's not going to happen any longer, and this will cause, what I feel will be, the second big shakeout since the 2.0 standards were adopted by almost every podcasting host that mattered back in the summer of 2018.

And at that time you may remember, if I will take you back to the olden times of summer of 2018, you might've seen a significant drop in your download numbers. Some of the bigger shows reported up to a 50% drop when we switched to IAB standards, which was just simply a better, more accurate tool of measuring downloads.

Well, we're going to see that again. Will it be 50%? I don't know. Here's a quick tip of the tech side, just to what's happening here. When anyone, I want to say subscribes, when someone follows your podcast on Apple Podcasts, it automatically downloads the episode. Next week, if you release an episode, it'll download that one, as well. And the week after that, it'll download it. At some point in time, Apple will stop downloading, Apple Podcasts will stop downloading episodes if the person who follows the show has not listened to one of those episodes. But for a while, it just keeps downloading.

Now, Spotify, when you follow, when someone follows your show on Spotify, it doesn't automatically download it just simply downloads a file, streams the file, if you will, when someone requests to play it. It looks like that's what Apple is switching to. Now, because of that difference in behavior, Apple automatically downloading, Spotify only downloading upon request, that's why Spotify doesn't rank as high in the charts, if you will, or show up on the radar as high when we're tracking downloads.

But when we look at reach and usage and other sorts of metrics, well, that's when Spotify winds up beating Apple. Those days might be over when Apple turns off automatically downloading episodes later on this month. I can't imagine any world where your stats and my stats aren't impacted by this. We will see a drop in the number of downloads, which will be reflected in our podcast media hosting company's dashboard for our podcasts.

If we're selling advertising on our show, that means our available advertising inventory will also drop and then be reported back to those advertisers who give us money. What are we going to do about this? Wow. Decimating, literally, this might be the time you could use the word decimate downloads. If we're lucky, it's only going to decimate downloads. But it's not like I've not been warning you that this was coming.

Look back in the history. How many times have I railed against the usage of download and our insistence of this metric, which is really just about computers talking to other computers, and yet we're holding onto them like it's something amazing? It's not. So I'm not terribly surprised by this.

Now, if you are supported by advertising, if advertising brings a significant amount of revenue to you, I apologize in advance for the rough weeks/months ahead of you. It's going to be very difficult to try and convince advertisers to give you the same amount of money for less. And you're really, they're getting less, they're perceiving less. They're getting the exact same thing in reality, but now they're looking and going, oh, all of these downloads before - apparently I went from 50,000 downloads a week to 20,000 downloads a week, or whatever, the number 30,000 or 40,000. The difference between those two are the ones that were automatically downloaded and never, ever listened to. Then it's not terribly surprising.

I've been in the ad game for a long time, and I know that advertisers constantly demand more things from publishers, and if you're selling advertising on your podcast, you're a publisher. They want more stuff. But now if you're not selling advertising and you just see your ads drop - big deal. So what? Your audience really hasn't changed, just the lens that you're looking at them has been corrected, if you will. You're still, it's still the same people who are consuming your content mostly. So you just now have a more accurate picture of that.

This is just like 2018. You didn't quit podcasting in 2018. You might've thought about it and you may think about it again, but it's not a big deal.

Now, where I think the real opportunity comes is the podcast hosting companies. Podcast media hosting companies that you and I both use to showcase our products and get them out there to the world, they can step in. They now have an opportunity, well they've had the opportunity, but now there's an opening and a window for the opportunity and they can now step in and give us much better data about the actual, true, real size of our audience that is not based on downloads. They have all the tools at their disposal.

Technically speaking for a second, armed with user agent - what device is downloading. IP address? Where's the location. And the referring URL - how did they get here? Those three things together will allow a smart podcast hosting company to revolutionize their dashboard and tell you the thing you've wanted to know forever. What's the size of my audience?

I can't quite tell you yet who's listening or how many of those listen, but they can tell you the size of your audience. And that'll be really cool when they can do that. There's a lot we do not know yet about this move Apple is making. And also remember this is a beta version. It is possible they could change it before it actually goes in production. But I can't figure why they would do that because not auto-downloading means less bandwidth. Puts them more in line with other audio consumption apps, less room on your phone.

So I think it's really happening. So see what your peers in the podcasting space think about this. Share this episode with them to give them a heads up to let them know big changes coming. I think we'll all get through it together.

Now, if you loved this early heads up and aren't totally defeated by the message I just gave to you, please consider going to buymeacoffee.com/evoterra, and sliding of virtual coffee my way. That's always nice.

That's it. I shall be back tomorrow with yet another Podcast Pontifications.

Cheers!

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