Big Changes To Libsyn Stats

One of the top reasons we hear from you that you chose libsyn as your host is for our stats.

Many of you check the stats on a daily or even hourly basis (don’t try and deny it…we totally know you do!) In order to feed your obsession we want to make sure we have as few delays as possible in the reporting of the stats.

In the past we relied on logs to be sent to us from our CDN – and there have been a few cases this year where there was a delay in those stats.  It is because of this that we are going to change our procedure so that we get the numbers directly from our traffic servers.

This will help speed up reporting.

We expect to see better stats responsiveness which means less delays and improved accuracy/timeliness

This also gives us a chance to improve the algorithm we are using for the stats – which has not really changed since libsyn started back in 2004.

Back then downloads were mostly just that – downloads.

Today we are seeing more and more requests from smartphones. The way smartphones request the files is different than back in the day of downloads from iPodderX and even iTunes.

Because of this unique request, we will be filtering out multiple requests from the same smartphone.

We have been running tests for the past few weeks and some shows dropped a little – and others we found went up a little.  Overall there was an average decrease of about 7% which was skewed from a few large shows that have a large percentage of smartphone traffic.

For those shows with smartphone traffic – there may be a drop of 10% to 15% in their stats or even a little more depending on the makeup of the traffic for their show.  Some shows should expect the impact to be negligible at this time.

We feel the new stats algorithm will be our most accurate to date and is designed to keep up with the changing smartphone usage landscape.

We understand some will not be happy to see any drop in stats – but we feel this change in the stats will provide more accurate and truthful downloads that reflect the way that podcast consumption has been changing to more podcast streaming and downloads from smartphones.

When will the stats be changing?

This Saturday March 31, from noon to midnight.

Please refer to more specifics on the libsyn support post

Please let us know any questions / concerns you might have with regards to the change in stats in the comments below!

More concerns? email rob (at) wizzard (dot) tv

For any technical issues, please continue to contact – [email protected]

Image credit via CC “Week 12” by thrp