Podcasting holds a single metric as sacred: downloads. And to ensure a podcast gets the most downloads consistently, lots of energy is spent encouraging people to become subscribers. 

But podcasting has a dirty underbelly that we're largely ignoring. Many of us don't want to face the truth, but the reality is that many downloads are never listened to.

Shocked? Don't be. Email marketers have known this for a very long time. It's not good enough to track delivery. We need to track if the file is ever opened. 

Once a podcast episode is opened, we know (thanks, Apple) that the majority -- upwards of 85% -- of the episode is listened to. That's much better than online video, where the vast majority of views are for less than 10 seconds -- often with the sound off. So hooray for podcasts, right? Maybe.

In this episode, I'll tell you how to use information from your podcast hosting company and from Apple Podcasts to find out what your show's "listen rate" actually is. Even better, I'll give you practical advice on how to improve it.

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