Why doesn't the embed have an autoplay feature?

Autoplay on embeds

Our embed players don't have an inbuilt autoplay feature. While we know this is often requested there are several reasons why we do not provide this:

Analytics - Autoplaying the audio for every website visitor will skew your podcast analytics significantly. A download would be recorded for every website visitor regardless if they have chosen to listen to the podcast or not. We want to provide accurate analytics based on genuine listeners that have interacted with your podcast.

Browsers - Modern browsers now automatically block autoplaying media. Google Chrome has its own Autoplay policy where they explain they want to give greater control of media playback to users and to minimise incentives to install ad blockers.

Data consumption - Autoplaying audio for every website visitor increases the data consumption for your website visitors each time they visit your website. This is especially important for your visitors that are using mobile devices and are paying directly for their data costs.

User experience - Overall autoplaying of audio is a poor experience for your website visitors and is not considered best practice. Autoplaying media reduces the time visitors spend on your site as they close the page in an effort to stop the unexpected audio playback. This will affect your time on page analytics as well as return visitor numbers.

Updated on: 24/03/2023