Every podcaster I know has had the same moment. You open your host, then Apple, then Spotify, and the three numbers do not match.
You wonder which one is wrong. The answer is usually none of them.
Three numbers, three meanings
Your host counts downloads: a request for the audio file. Apple counts listeners and plays inside Apple's app. Spotify counts streams, and it measures inside its own app. It does not share listener-level data outside it.
That is just how each one is built. A download is not a play, and a play is not a person.
The trouble is that the dashboards all use friendly words like "downloads" and "listeners" and never tell you the rule behind the number. So you quote one to a sponsor, the sponsor checks another, and now you look like you are guessing.
What we shipped
Four changes, all aimed at the same idea: a number should always come with its definition.
Honest download counts. A download in PodGlue now counts only after about a minute of audio has been served. Search crawlers and link previewers are flagged instead of counted. Each download also records the listening app, the device and the region.
The analytics page states the definition in one line, and shows what was left out and why.
Import your numbers from any other host. If you are on Buzzsprout, Transistor, Libsyn or anywhere else, you upload the CSV export, tell PodGlue which column is which, and match the rows to your episodes. Those numbers show up beside PodGlue's, with the source named and its own definition kept intact.
A Spotify "stream" stays a stream. We never relabel it as a download to make the totals look tidy.
Skip the intro for returning listeners. You mark an orientation segment, say which episodes carry it (the first three only, for example), and a visitor who has been to the episode page before sees "Skip the intro, you've heard it." There is no tracking beyond what the page already does.
The offer builder. You type in your own numbers and get a flat price per recording, three tiers, goal-based pricing, and the terms to settle. PodGlue never suggests a price. It also shows the effective cost per thousand listens of your own flat price, so you see the number a brand will work out before the brand says it out loud.
What this looks like in practice
Say your analytics page reads: 340 downloads, 41 excluded as bots, 12 below one minute.
You know what to tell a sponsor. Three hundred and forty downloads got past the first minute of audio. The 53 that did not count are shown, with the reason, so nobody can accuse you of padding.
A sponsor who hears "340, and here is exactly how I count" trusts you more than one who hears a bigger number with no rule behind it.
And if you also imported your old host's export, you can say where the two sets agree and where they differ, and why.
Reach is not the whole story
I want to be careful here. Cleaner numbers will not land you a sponsor on their own.
Billy's fishing show pulled $10,400 from a tackle shop at about 100 downloads an episode. Sid Meadows' furniture show landed 8 sponsors at 200. Neither had reach. Both were inside a world the sponsor already cared about.
The first sponsor comes from whose world your show is inside, not from how many people press play. Honest numbers do a smaller job: they keep you from losing the sponsor you already earned.
What is next
Two things are on the list.
First, putting the three platform numbers in one view, so you can see Apple, Spotify and your host side by side and understand the gap instead of puzzling over it.
Second, finding the lopsided slice of your audience: the city, the app or the group of listeners that is far more engaged than the rest. That slice is often the story a sponsor wants to hear.
Where PodGlue fits
I built PodGlue because podcasters were doing the stitching by hand, copying numbers from one dashboard to another and hoping nobody asked how they were counted.
Now the definition sits next to the count, and the sources sit next to each other. If you want to see how your own numbers read, the analytics page is the place to start.
Run your next episode through PodGlue
Upload one transcript. Get show notes, social posts and an SEO page, plus a guest record that remembers the conversation after you publish.
Start free trial14 days free · Cancel before day 14, pay nothing
Don’t just read the build. Shape it.
PodGlue is built from conversations with hosts, guests, producers, and agencies doing the work. What does Apple, Spotify and Your Host Are Counting Different Things look like in your workflow?
Related reading
Your First Sponsor Is in a Room You Already Know
Two conversations this week asked the same question: how do we get a sponsor before we have numbers? Here is what we built to answer it.
Your New Show Has No Numbers. You Can Still Get a Sponsor.
A brand-new show can't sell reach. It can sell access to a specific audience and good content. Here is what worked for Billy, and what Justin Moore's Canon pitch looks like.
Ninety Videos of IP Collecting Dust
Doreca Delbridge isn't a podcaster. She has roughly ninety YouTube videos and a recurring philosophy she talks about across all of them. That's a book. It just hasn't been one yet.