As well as being a major player in the podcast space, Spotify also has an excellent podcaster portal, where you can access deep dive Spotify podcast analytics, manage your show and more!
While Captivate offers industry-leading analytics, including your Spotify performance, the Spotify for Podcasters portal is a great complementary platform for audience demographic information.
It's also super easy to access, too, as this walkthrough will show you!
Accessing the Spotify for Podcasters Portal
Once you've submitted your podcast to Spotify using our simple one-click submission process, you can then create an account on the Spotify for Podcasters portal.
To do this, make sure you have the following ready:
The RSS feed for your podcast
The Author Email for your podcast (the one you use for your show in Captivate)
A Spotify account (you can create one here if you don't already have one)
Important: because we automatically hide your email from your RSS feed to protect your privacy, you'll need to unhide this while claiming your podcast. You can do this under Podcast Settings > Privacy Settings > Un-hide for 24 Hours.
Once you have that information, follow these steps to set your podcast up:
Step 1: Claim your podcast on Spotify for Podcasters
Head on over to the Spotify for Podcasters portal and click Get Started. This will take you to the sign up page, where you'll use your Spotify account email address to sign up.
Once signed up, click your username at the top left of the dashboard to Add/Claim your podcast.
Click the Get Started button.
Paste your Captivate RSS feed URL into the Link to RSS feed box. This will show you a preview of the show you're adding. If all looks good, click the Next button.
Step 2: Choose how your show is displayed in Spotify
The next screen will let you choose how your show is displayed in Spotify: where your podcast is made, primary language spoken in your podcast, who your hosting provider is and your primary category.
The cool thing about Spotify for Podcasters is you can also add up to three sub-categories for your Primary Category. This helps attract a wider audience for your podcast when published to Spotify.
You can then repeat this for two more Categories, giving you up to 12 different categories/sub-categories, to really optimize your podcast for Spotify listeners.
Once you've added these, and you're happy with them, click Next. This will take you to the final check screen before submitting your podcast.
If everything here looks good, you can click the Submit button.
Note: make sure you're happy with the settings on this page, as they can't be edited after you submit.
Once you click Submit, Spotify will confirm your show has been added, as well as provide the link to where you can find it on the platform.
And that's it - you can now start accessing the Spotify for Podcasters portal for additional details and analytics around your podcast!
Accessing Spotify for Analytics
Now that you've created your Spotify for Podcasters account, you can access their analytics dashboard.
Simply log in to your account, and then click on your podcast cover art to access the Spotify analytics for your podcast. This gives you deeper insights into your Episodes and Audience, as well as some simple marketing tools.
Spotify Analytics are broken down into four metrics:
Starts
Streams
Listeners
Followers
While some are the same as what you'd find in your Captivate analytics dashboard, a couple are different. Here's what each means.
A Start is when a Spotify user clicks play on your episode. It doesn't matter how little the user listens - even one second is counted here, so this isn't a metric we'd recommend using too much.
A Stream is when a Spotify user clicks play on your episode, and listens for at least a minute. This is in line with the IAB Certification that you'll find on all your Captivate analytics.
A Listener is a Unique Listener, the same as you can find in your Captivate analytics.
A Follower is someone who has clicked the Follow button for your show - this is viewed as a subscriber.
While this overview gives you a nice quick look at how your podcast is doing on Spotify, it's when you dig in to the different sections that you can drill down more.
Your Spotify Episodes Analytics
When you're in your Episodes tab, you can get a nice overview of how all your episodes have performed, with a choice of date range:
Last 7 days
Last 14 days
Last 30 days
Last 90 days
First 30 days
First 90 days
Last calendar month
All time
Custom
Here, you can see how many Starts, Streams, and Listeners you had, as well as the publish date for that episode.
If you click on the title of an episode, that takes you to the specific analytics for that episode:
Episode Performance (the average listen time and completion percentage by listeners)
Starts & Streams
Listeners
Gender
Age
This can help you identify who your audience is, which can help when it comes to creating targeted marketing for that group.
Your Spotify Audience Analytics
While your episode analytics give you some insight into your listener demographics, your Spotify Audience Analytics offers some extra and useful info:
Starts & Streams
Listeners
Followers
Gender
Age
Artists they're listening to
Country
The last two metrics can help you plan out a marketing campaign, by using radio stations that play the most popular artists of your audience, and where they're based.
Your Details Tab on Spotify for Podcasters
The final tab offers some basic details about your show, as well as some simple marketing options.
Podcast information shows you what trailer you're currently using. If you don't have one, you can select a popular episode that will be pinned on the Spotify listing for your podcast.
Share gives you the direct link to your podcast on Spotify.
Podcast badges offers you four variations of the official Listen on Spotify logo, to use on your website, social media, newsletter, etc.
Podcast settings displays your podcast's RSS feed as well as your podcast host. You can update these settings here if you need to.
And that's it! By using your Spotify for Podcasters portal, along with your Spotify Analytics, to complement the deep-dive analytics you already get with Captivate, you'll never be in the dark as to how your podcast is doing on Spotify!
Recommended Reading