Author Topic: Blubrry Statistics not reflecting iTunes Charts  (Read 3185 times)

Brady James Curry

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Blubrry Statistics not reflecting iTunes Charts
« on: November 12, 2016, 06:06:34 pm »
Hi, I'm Brady Curry and I own The Cadillac Curry Show. Over the last six months or so, I've noticed that I've made it within the top 20 of the iTunes chart in Paraguay, Denmark, and the Philippines. From what I understand, in order to make it into the charts you must have a good amount of downloads like 5,000 in one month for a new show or over 1,000 downloads in 24 hours to bump a show into the top 20 of the iTunes chart. I've been using Blubrry Statistics for several months now, and the statistics don't show more than like 15 downloads from the country of which my show made the top 20... Right now I'm #18 in Paraguay, but Blubrry Statistics show zero downloads coming from Paraguay... Any thoughts? Is it a language Barrier or a legal issue to obtain information from this country in particular?

Thank you,

Shawn Thorpe

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Re: Blubrry Statistics not reflecting iTunes Charts
« Reply #1 on: November 14, 2016, 05:57:52 pm »
iTunes rankings are based on total number of subscribers, not total downloads. So, while you may be seeing what looks like a low download number for a certain country, you may be getting enough new subscribers within that country to raise your rank within that country's iTunes chart.

Brady James Curry

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Re: Blubrry Statistics not reflecting iTunes Charts
« Reply #2 on: November 17, 2016, 09:36:24 pm »
Ah got ya, Thank you for the explanation Shawn. Are my numbers somewhat accurate to the best of your knowledge? like 1,500 to 5,000 realistically without over estimating it?

Shawn Thorpe

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Re: Blubrry Statistics not reflecting iTunes Charts
« Reply #3 on: November 18, 2016, 05:10:26 pm »
Are my numbers somewhat accurate to the best of your knowledge? like 1,500 to 5,000 realistically without over estimating it?
Is this an accurate estimate of what? I'm not sure I understand the question.

Brady James Curry

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Re: Blubrry Statistics not reflecting iTunes Charts
« Reply #4 on: November 21, 2016, 02:40:20 pm »
Subscribers, as you mentioned in the reply.

Shawn Thorpe

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Re: Blubrry Statistics not reflecting iTunes Charts
« Reply #5 on: November 21, 2016, 02:54:25 pm »
As far as reaching a higher ranking within the iTunes Store, getting 1500-5000 subscribers within a short period of time would likely be enough to see a decent placement unless you're looking at something like the Comedy category in North America, where you'd be competing with a lot of celebrities and well-known brands.

Brady James Curry

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Re: Blubrry Statistics not reflecting iTunes Charts
« Reply #6 on: November 23, 2016, 04:23:52 pm »
Thank you Shawn that's good to know. From what I understand, iTunes checks if a listener who is subscribed to my podcast feed has listened to at least one episode every 72 hours. If that is true, would adding up the total XML feed hits after three days be a good calculation of the total subscribers or should I use FeedBurner to know how many subscribers are on my feed?

Shawn Thorpe

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Re: Blubrry Statistics not reflecting iTunes Charts
« Reply #7 on: November 23, 2016, 04:42:39 pm »
There's really no good way to measure actual subscribers. Feedburner's subscriber count is based on feed requests over the last 24 hours, that's it. Relying on server stats might be better but only if you break down all of the requests by user agent. And even then, you won't get individual user agent IDs. You'll just have a block of requests from a specific user agent. When I'm trying to get an idea of total audience size, I like to look at trends in my unique downloads for episodes that are at least four weeks old. I figure, anyone who's a regular subscriber has downloaded the show within those first 4 weeks. So, if I see most of my episodes that are at least 4 weeks old are trending around 200 downloads, that seems like a good estimate of my total audience.

David Zinger

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Re: Blubrry Statistics not reflecting iTunes Charts
« Reply #8 on: March 17, 2017, 02:19:54 pm »
Have you tried third party sites? www.itunestop100.com? Supposedly they have live updates for the Itunes Top 100 Charts. Several options too. If you're not showing up you might be looking at a cached list from a 3rd party.

Shawn Thorpe

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Re: Blubrry Statistics not reflecting iTunes Charts
« Reply #9 on: March 17, 2017, 07:15:59 pm »
Have you tried third party sites? www.itunestop100.com? Supposedly they have live updates for the Itunes Top 100 Charts. Several options too. If you're not showing up you might be looking at a cached list from a 3rd party.

Does that site even list podcasts? All I see are music genres.

David Zinger

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Re: Blubrry Statistics not reflecting iTunes Charts
« Reply #10 on: March 20, 2017, 04:14:04 pm »
I think I was a bit misled by itunestop100.com Specifically it seems to be music only! Sorry!