I’d be quite happy to participate is sharing listener figures in a common format – at the moment, many of the smaller net stations seem to quote some incredible figures! At least with this, everyone would be quoting their listener figures in a way that could be easily compared with other stations.

@smartin – an iPod certainly reports back to iTunes what has been listened to; and in the case of audio books, does store information about where in the audio the user has got to. However, given that iTunes automatically stops downloading after a set number of un-listened episodes, it’s probably fair enough to argue that download statistics are good enough – and, in any case, they should be entirely comparable between providers.

All the podcast stats I’ve ever seen published have been quoted as downloads, rather than listens.

Given that the vast majority of Podcast listening is, I gather, done via iTunes and iPods, that an iPod knows when you’ve actually listened to a podcast and that the iPod to iTunes interface is pretty good, why can we not get reliable podcast statistics for actual listening?

My only niggle with this is that there are *other* things going on in this area, and it’s a bit off of Absolute to go splashing it as apparently something innovative for them, particularly as other companies have been very restrained about claiming credit for other industry beneficial co-operative initiatives. That kind of behaviour nibbles away at trust, and trust must be at the centre of these joint activities.

That said, Absolute seem to be prepared to trade some good relations with their colleagues in the radio industry in return for a bit of a PR splash at the moment. Maybe they feel a bit unloved?