At a recent Worldwide Developer’s Conference, Apple talked about podcasting and their new Podcast Analytics feature that should be released later this year.
They shared some interesting facts about podcasting:
- There are over 400,000 podcasts in iTunes with 1000 being added each week
- In 2016, they served up to 10 billion episode downloads and streaming plays across iOS, macOS and tvOS, up from 8 billion in 2015
- They’re on track for 20% growth
- iOS11 adds support for seasons
- They will strip HTML, CDATA, and RTF in existing “Summary” tags because they will now appear in several places
Apple also discussed their new feature, something podcasters have been hoping to see in their lifetime:
Podcast Analytics.
Here are some of the highlight about this new feature:
- You will be able to see how much of your podcast episodes are played on Apple Podcasts
- You will be able to compare the performance of your episodes and podcasts over time
- You will be able to see what episodes are more interesting than others
- You will be able to tell when people are skipping over your content
- User privacy will be a priority – Your analytics will not be tied to your Apple ID
- Podcast Analytics will be launching later this year
With only a few months left until the end of the year, podcasters should have access to this feature very shortly. I was unable to determine if number of subscribers would be revealed their new analytics feature, but this is one step closer to that mystifying number than ever before.
Regardless of what might be left out of the analytics, it’s still all good news. Now podcasters will be able to fine tune their shows to give the listeners more of what they want and less of what they don’t want.
Source: https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2017/512/