Spotify Revises Podcast Play Counts After Creator Backlash
Spotify / Play Milestones
After backlash from creators, Spotify is making changes to Plays, a new public-facing metric for audio and video podcasts. Initially, the streaming platform said it would display Plays, which measures how many times a podcast episode has been listened to or watched, on all episodes. But now, Spotify says it will only show Plays at milestone thresholds.
Spotify will publicly display Play counts only once an episode reaches 50K plays. From there, the count will update automatically at different milestones, such as 100K and beyond. Creators will still be able to see the exact Play counts on their end via the analytics dashboards on Spotify for Creators and Megaphone.
Spotify says this new iteration will roll out over the coming weeks.
Why It Matters: This change was expected after a wave of backlash from creators, which Spotify quickly acknowledged. It’s a clear improvement over the initial rollout, as Plays will now only be shown once an episode hits notable listen or view milestones, starting at 50K plays and moving upward. This milestone approach also gives creators and their fans opportunities to celebrate significant achievements.
While this is a positive update, a better approach would be to let creators opt out of displaying Plays entirely. Although YouTube doesn’t offer this option with Views (which Spotify’s Plays are likely inspired by), podcast numbers historically have been controlled by creators and publishers. That’s why giving podcast creators and hosts the option to control whether their Plays are public would make sense.
That said, this situation highlights a reminder: brands, platforms, companies, and anyone working with creators must always conduct research with creators of all sizes, not just big names. Spotify likely did research, but probably focused on larger creators who would benefit from publicly showing Plays, overlooking smaller creators who might prefer to keep those numbers private.
