Podcasting: Add podcasting stats prefix field to tie into third-party podcasting analytics services

[kathrynwp]

The Problem

We don’t currently have any download or podcast stats on Atomic sites, and the download stats on Simple site are very basic, and not a wholly accurate representation of how many people actually listened to a podcast.

However, it’s possible for users to link up to free third-party podcast services like Chartable or Blrbrry and get highly detailed stats, just by adding a "prefix" to their audio file URL in the audio block.

The catch is that currently, you can only add the necessary prefix to the audio block by manually editing the HTML of every audio block containing a podcast episode, one at a time.

The Potential Solution

It would be ideal to have an option to add a stats prefix in the Podcast Settings area at Manage > Settings > Writing > Podcasting (https://wordpress.com/settings/podcasting/) which would get pulled through automatically into the audio block.

For example, if the prefix supplied by Blubrrry were this:

media.blubrry.com/can_i_create_a_hit/

...the audio block would now output the following:

<figure class="wp-block-audio"><audio controls src="https://media.blubrry.com/can_i_create_a_hit/canicreateahitpodcast.files.wordpress.com/2020/03/ep4d.mp3"></audio></figure>

Rather than the default:

<figure class="wp-block-audio"><audio controls src="https://canicreateahitpodcast.files.wordpress.com/2020/03/ep4d.mp3"></audio></figure>

Ideally, the user would add their selected prefix just once in the Podcast Settings panel and then it would be automatically applied to each podcast audio block, for all audio blocks in posts within the site's declared podcast category.

Users could could then get highly detailed podcast stats from services that use this system like Chartable or Blubrry, for free.

Mockup

One idea from @michaeldcain is to have a preset whitelist of prefixes, that would display as a dropdown menu from which users could make a selection. This would avoid the potential for typos – and be good for security – but would require us to update things if there are any prefix changes by third parties in the future, or if we want to add or remove a service.

Here's a quick mockup of what it might look like:

Context / Source

A Podcasting for Beginners course is currently in development for WordPress.com, which brought this issue to the forefront.

Thanks to @rickmgithub for the original enhancement request – from which much of this text was borrowed – and to @GeoJunkie for additional input. And to @damiannep for the original workaround!

#reallife #painpoint

[drwpcom]

This would be brilliant. This was one of the reasons I originally installed Seriously Simple Podcasting on my site, but then it took over my podcast feed and I had to backtrack. Now I edit the HTML code for each audio block but it is cumbersome. Sometimes I think I've done it, and then the link changes to blob which I think means the file is still uploading (?). This means that I need to check any audio embeds multiple times to ensure there are no errors. It's currently a terrible user experience and potentially messy for beginners.

[rickmgithub]

Same here. I have to change the audio block code each time too to add the tracking URL pre-fixes.

This would transform the experience for podcasting users hosting their podcast on WordPress.com too as they would get a source of good stats straight away.

It would allow us to promote getting a Wordpress podcast site with more confidence as well.

[github-actions]

This issue is stale because it has been 180 days with no activity. You can keep the issue open by adding a comment. If you do, please provide additional context and explain why you’d like it to remain open. You can also close the issue yourself — if you do, please add a brief explanation and apply one of relevant issue close labels.

[kathrynwp]

I think this is well worth keeping open. We now have a paid podcasting course on WordPress.com and providing this option would be useful for overcoming the current very cumbersome stats method described above.

[JoshuaGoode]

Encountered a situation where this would have been very nice to have.

In an attempt to workaround the like of File Downloads stats, we utilized Podtrac on a site. This required manually editing past audio players to include the prefix.

A way to automatically append a prefix to an enclosure, or even just allow it to be set on the audio player block, would be useful.

See my comment on the File Downloads issue for more notes and feedback for this: #36197 (comment)