What counts as a podcast download?

A download is the podcast industry's standard measure of an audience, and it's what Transistor counts. A download means an episode's audio has been delivered to a listener's device, whether they stream it straight away or save it to listen later.

The Sounds Profitable Podcast Industry Glossary defines a download as:

"A term governed by the IAB Podcast Measurement Technical Guidelines that is counted once per episode, per unique IP address and device user agent combination, in a 24-hour period when 60 seconds or more of the audio file for a podcast episode has been sent from the hosting platform to the listener's device."

How Transistor counts downloads

• Once per listener, per episode, per day. If the same listener requests an episode several times in a day, it counts once. Days run on UTC.
• Bots and automated requests are filtered out. Downloads from known bots, crawlers and podcast directory indexers aren't counted.

This follows the IAB guidelines.

See Are Transistor's stats IAB compliant?

Downloads aren't plays

A download measures delivery, not listening. Podcast apps measure listening: plays, streams and listening time. That's why your numbers in Transistor won't match Apple Podcasts, Spotify or YouTube exactly.

See Why are my stats in Transistor different from Apple Podcasts, Spotify and YouTube?

If you have additional questions please reach out to us:

• Email - support@transistor.fm
• Live Chat: https://transistor.fm/contact/

Updated on: 02/11/2026