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Firstory Listening Data Standards

Written by Firstory

Update (July 2026):

The feature you've been waiting for is back — we've merged Spotify and Apple/other RSS data once again! Spotify data is now combined into Listens, so there's no need to add the numbers up yourself anymore. This makes it easier and more intuitive to see your show's overall performance, without switching between different data sources.

In the Firstory Studio dashboard, we provide a variety of analytics to help creators understand listener behavior and find ways to optimize their shows. Firstory is now the only podcast hosting platform in APAC with official Spotify data integration, and your listening data comes from two sources:

  • Spotify official: provides Streams, Plays, Listeners, and Followers

  • Apple Podcasts and other RSS platforms: provide unique downloads and repeat downloads, calculated and filtered according to IAB standards

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Definitions

If you want a single number that captures your show's overall performance, "Listens" is the metric to look at.

  • Listens = Unique downloads from Apple and other RSS platforms + Spotify streams
    This reflects the number of valid listens and is the core metric best suited for tracking overall performance.

  • Repeat Listens = Repeat downloads from Apple and other RSS platforms + Spotify plays
    This includes repeat listens by the same listener, reflecting the total volume of plays for the show.

The dashboard's Show cumulative performance uses the same definitions, tallying Listens, Repeat Listens, and average per-episode performance since your show launched.

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Spotify Data (Exclusive to Firstory)

As the only hosting platform in APAC with official Spotify data integration, you can see the following Spotify-exclusive data directly in the Firstory dashboard:

  • Daily Spotify listening data: Daily Spotify listening data now appears in the chart for the first time, giving you a complete view of repeat and unique listens across all platforms — a one-stop, more comprehensive way to analyze your show's overall performance.

  • Listeners and Followers: Two advanced Spotify metrics that let you go beyond listen counts to understand the actual size of the audience your show reaches and the growth trend of your loyal fan base, giving you a more precise way to evaluate how your show is performing.

  • Daily data going back to mid-2025: Review data changes over a longer time span for more complete trend analysis and comparisons, giving you a full picture of your show's growth trajectory.

In addition, when you open an episode, you can also see episode-level daily Spotify listens and Listeners data, helping you precisely evaluate the performance of each episode.

Plan note: Listens and Repeat Listens totals on all plans already include Spotify data; Spotify data in the daily chart, along with Listeners and Followers, are exclusive features of the Pro plan and above.

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Spotify metric definitions: The following is compiled from Spotify's official documentation. For more detail, you can also log in to your Spotify for Creators dashboard for more complete data explanations.

  • Streams: The metric closest to the "downloads" concept used by other podcast platforms

  • Plays: Counted once when an episode is listened to or watched for 30 seconds or more. This is a standard Spotify has used since June 2026, developed jointly with the AMP (Alliance for Measurement in Podcasting) industry alliance, which filters out low-intent plays such as accidental clicks

  • Listeners: The number of unique people who played an episode of your show within the selected time period (now officially referred to by Spotify as Spotify Audience); this differs from IAB's method of deduplicating by "IP + device + 24 hours"

  • Followers: The number of people who follow your show on Spotify, reflecting the size and growth of your loyal audience

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RSS Data

Data from Apple Podcasts and other platforms that deliver listens via RSS is calculated according to the standards of the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), with noise filtered out to reflect actual listening behavior as closely as possible.

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Why filter out noise?

Podcast listening behavior is highly varied:

  • Listeners may save an episode and play it later

  • Switching networks during a commute can cause listening sessions to span multiple IPs

  • When an episode is long, listeners may listen in segments across multiple days

Without a unified calculation standard, it would be difficult to accurately reflect real listening behavior. This is why Firstory follows IAB guidelines to establish a consistent calculation method, so creators can work with advertisers using data they can trust.

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How Downloads are calculated

Definition: Calculated according to IAB guidelines, filtering out various potentially duplicate or invalid downloads.
​Calculation method: When the same IP and device listen to the same episode within 24 hours, it counts as 1 download — this is the unique download count. The total download count without deduplication is the repeat download count. Requests with playback time under 60 seconds are excluded from both.

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Filtering criteria

  • Filter out test files (non-playback)

  • Exclude bot or crawler requests

  • Exclude cloud server IPs

  • Exclude sessions with playback under 60 seconds

Why are Spotify and RSS data calculated separately and then added together?

Spotify doesn't deliver listens through RSS downloads — its data comes directly from an official API, and its calculation method differs greatly from the IAB standard. Mixing the two into a single standard would distort the data. That's why we display the two data sources as separate series in the chart and add them together into Listens and Repeat Listens, so you can see both overall performance and the trend for each channel.

The reasons include:

  1. Maintaining the credibility of IAB data, ensuring a trustworthy basis for advertising partnerships

  2. Spotify uses its own algorithm rather than the IAB standard

  3. Spotify's data update mechanism is different — it updates data from two days prior each day (see Update frequency below)

  4. Spotify only reflects listening activity on its own platform, and caching may prevent the data from being returned in full

Update frequency

  • Apple and other RSS platform data: Updated every 6 hours, 4 times a day

  • Spotify data: Updated once a day, between GMT 0–3 (Taiwan time 8–11 AM), with data from two days prior. It's therefore normal for the most recent two days of Spotify data not yet to be reflected — no need to worry.

Summary

Listens: The core metric combining Apple and other RSS platforms (IAB standard) with official Spotify data, giving you a one-stop view of your show's overall performance
​Repeat Listens: Total play volume including repeat listening behavior
​Listeners and Followers: Spotify-exclusive audience metrics that track your reach and the growth of your loyal fans

This design balances professional data credibility with cross-platform completeness, giving creators a reliable reference for advertising partnerships and content optimization.

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