Spotify has rolled out a new feature that publicly displays the number of plays for podcast episodes, as announced on their creators’ resource page.
This move marks a significant shift in how podcast performance is showcased, offering both creators and listeners a visible metric of an episode’s reach. The “plays” metric specifically counts the number of times an episode is started after a user presses the Play button, capturing both audio and video podcast engagements.
Unlike Spotify’s existing “streams” metric, which only counts plays that exceed 60 seconds and remains a staple for industry-standard reporting, the new play count is a broader measure.
By including every instance an episode is initiated, the public numbers are likely to appear slightly higher than traditional stream counts. This distinction underscores a focus on raw engagement, even if brief, rather than sustained listening.
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The introduction of public play counts aligns Spotify with a broader trend of “vanity metrics” that prioritize visible, attention-grabbing figures. For creators, this offers a transparent way to gauge an episode’s initial appeal and benchmark performance against competitors.
Listeners, meanwhile, can use play counts to identify trending or popular episodes, much like view counts on video platforms.
The metric is displayed across the Spotify app—on home pages, episode pages, and show pages — and is also accessible to creators via Spotify for Creators and Megaphone.
This move positions Spotify as a more competitive player in the podcasting space, where it trails YouTube’s dominance with its 170 million monthly podcast listeners compared to YouTube’s one billion.
By emphasizing play counts, Spotify aims to draw attention to its growing creator ecosystem, which recently saw over $100 million paid out to podcasters in Q1 2025 alone through its Partner Program.
The feature also complements Spotify’s push into video podcasts, where engagement metrics like plays can highlight the format’s rising popularity.
However, the focus on play counts raises questions about the prioritization of surface-level metrics over deeper engagement indicators.
In an industry where sustained listens (streams) are the gold standard, public play counts could inflate perceptions of success, much like likes or views on social media.
As one of the last digital mediums to resist such metrics, podcasting now joins the ranks of platforms embracing visible popularity markers. Newsletters, it seems, remain the final holdout against this wave of vanity metrics.
Spotify’s latest feature reflects its ambition to make podcasting more accessible and creator-friendly while fueling discovery through transparent data.
Whether this shift will redefine success in the podcasting world or simply amplify the allure of big numbers remains to be seen.
