Chartable is closing. What should I use instead?
In the early days of Chartable, there was nothing quite like it.
The company debuted in 2018. Initially, it was a simple tool to help podcasters track chart performance across Apple Podcasts, Pocket Casts and Stitcher. But they quickly expanded beyond charts to offer some truly pioneering features.
I remember the excitement I felt in 2019 when Chartable introduced SmartLinks, which made it significantly easier to measure the marketing effectiveness of clickable/tappable media. Later that year, Chartable rolled out SmartPromos, offering similar insights for podcast-to-podcast marketing.
Of course, over the past 5 years, several competing services have come to market, Spotify acquired Chartable, and download-based podcast measurement has become less relevant.
Then, this morning, Chartable announced their plans to shutter operations in December 2024. A sad day for an important company and team. But not entirely surprising. For a while now, the team here at Bumper has been anticipating this news from Chartable, testing replacements, and recommending Chartable alternatives to our clients.
I’m happy to share some of those recommendations today, now that Chartable is leaving the field.
Full transparency: Bumper has no affiliate or business development relationships with any of the companies or services I’ll mention here. We’re simply happy paying customers of many of these vendors, and recommend them because they suit our needs and our clients' needs – not because we have any financial incentive to do so.
No drop-in replacement for Chartable
First things first: Chartable isn’t one thing. It’s a bunch of related services grouped together. This means it can be difficult to talk about a “Chartable replacement” because it depends on what parts of Chartable’s services you might need to replace:
SmartLinks: download attribution for clickable/tappable media like social posts, email newsletters
SmartPromos: download attribution for podcast-to-podcast marketing like promo spots, guesting, and feed drops
Download tracking: prefix-based pass-through download measurement
Chart measurement and review aggregation: global podcast chart monitoring
Demographics: inferences about age, gender, etc.
Consumption: displaying consumption details from Spotify (and previously, Apple Podcasts) in a single dashboard, alongside downloads and other measures
I’m not aware of any single drop-in replacement that offers all these features. If you need to replace every aspect of what Chartable did, get ready to cobble it together across various services.
Here’s what Bumper uses and recommends…
SmartLinks
There are many services that offer purpose-built podcast landing pages that direct traffic to different listening destinations. These include episodes.fm, podfollow, Plink, and many others.
But not all of these services offer attribution. Attribution is important. Attribution allows creators and marketers to understand what happens in a podcast app after someone taps one of these links. Moreover, it allows podcast marketers to tie these downstream activities back to a specific traffic source. Did someone tap then download an episode? Tap and listen to an episode? Tap and follow the show?
Our current favourite SmartLink-like service is Linkfire for Podcasts. In addition to their nice-looking, highly customizable landing pages, Linkfire’s killer feature is their data-sharing partnership with Apple Podcasts. This allows podcasters to understand what happens when users tap through to Apple’s platform. As Apple’s documentation explains:
With Linkfire data, you can go beyond the standard download reports and get all-new insights to learn what’s driving the most listens, plays, and follows on Apple Podcasts. If you offer Apple Podcasts Subscriptions, you can also add an affiliate token to track subscription performance and receive commissions.
For me, attributed listeners and followers are vastly superior to attributed downloads. Why? Because listeners and followers represent people. And downloads aren’t people.
As I wrote earlier this month, Spotify has begun to roll out their own trackable sharing links to some users. These links also offer attribution, but obviously send all traffic to Spotify, which isn’t helpful for listeners who prefer other apps. But… Spotify’s trackable sharing links can be used as destination URL in Linkfire’s system. So if you want “one link to rule them all,” Linkfire for Podcasts used in tandem with Spotify’s trackable sharing links feel like a solid combo.
SmartPromos
Historically, SmartPromos have been useful for at least two different use cases:
Podcast-to-podcast attribution
“I ran ads for my podcast on another podcast. How many downloads of my show resulted from that?”
At Bumper, we execute paid media campaigns for many of our clients. And because we’re Bumper, we believe in measuring the impact of those paid campaigns.
Anticipating Chartable’s closure, my colleague Miriam and I started to investigate alternative podcast-to-podcast attribution services to help us measure the impact of paid campaigns. We kicked the tires on a number of competing services.
After running several test campaigns, a clear favourite emerged: Magellan AI’s pod-to-pod attribution. The service is solid. The reporting is reliably updated and easy to understand. And the entire team has been lovely to work with.
Podcast-to-web attribution
“I ran ads for my product/service on a podcast. How many visits to my website or app resulted from that?”
Sometimes, podcasters and advertisers want to understand the overlap between devices that downloaded a podcast episode, and devices that visited a website or installed an app. Chartable used to offer this service, but ceded that territory to Podsights, which became Spotify Ad Analytics after Spotify acquired both companies.
If you need this functionality and have a budget, I recommend looking into Magellan AI’s pixel-based attribution.
If you need this functionality and have no budget, Spotify Ad Analytics has a $0 price tag. Personally, I find Spotify Ad Analytics has a steep learning curve, so I’d be cautious if you’re new to this aspect of podcast measurement and expect you’ll need support.
Download tracking
Many podcasters measure downloads using the built-in analytics features of their hosting provider. This is a wise move because hosting providers usually have the best vantage point to understand download numbers, and have the most data available to implement the IAB’s guidance on download measurement.
For years, Chartable’s Trackable analytics prefix was the linchpin for most of their attribution products, but also offered podcasters a nice belt-and-suspenders approach to download measurement. Because pass-through analytics prefixes are designed to see all download requests for a podcast, services like Chartable offered a nice gut check in case a hosting provider’s numbers seemed a bit janky.
It’s a real credit to Chartable’s team that, over years of running a pass-through analytics prefix, I can’t recall a single significant prefix outage that impacted delivery of podcast episodes. Amazing uptime.
If you need or want a pass-through analytics prefix as a gut check against your hosting provider’s numbers, I recommend OP3. It’s rock solid, privacy-focused, auditable, and open-source. It also makes your show’s download numbers public by default:
Once you start using this prefix, you are opening up your show’s listener numbers to the world, without compromising your listeners' privacy. App developers and companies can start building products and services for you using this open data, without you having to manage a custom integration.
Not everyone is comfortable with this, of course. If you’re not comfortable making your show’s download numbers public, I suggest reflecting on exactly why that is – especially in a podcast ecosystem where an increasing number of measures are public by default, including YouTube view counts and Spotify follower counts.
Chart measurement and review aggregation
There are many services that claim to help podcasters monitor their chart appearance, ratings, and reviews. Among them: Podstatus, Podkite, Podcharts, and Podrover.
I have no direct experience with any of these services. Bumper has its own internal review aggregation tools, and Chartable was our main source of historical chart performance data.
I wish I had a strong recommendation here, but don’t.
Demographics
Chartable used data from their Trackable prefix, and enriched it with third-party data to infer demographics:
Chartable has partnered with Epsilon to provide insights into US based household level demographics for users of the Trackable analytics prefix. We use statistical sampling methods applied across Epsilon’s dataset, matched against the Trackable dataset, to calculate demographics in four categories - income, education, gender and age. These categories are calculated at the household level, not at the individual level.
I’ve always been a bit skeptical of household-level inferences based on IP addresses. That said, I know many B2B podcasts want this type of directional insight.
If you have a budget, I suggest looking at CoHost’s prefix, which offers many of the same demographic elements Chartable offered, as well as firmographic data.
If you don’t have a budget, demographic information is available to podcasters in the Spotify for Podcasters dashboard. Bear in mind that this is self-reported, and only representative of your show’s Spotify audience.
Consumption data: people and time
At Bumper, we believe in measuring audience, which is to say, measuring the number of people who listen, and the time they spend. Downloads measure neither people nor time, and can be an incredibly misleading way to gauge the size or composition of a show’s audience.
For some podcasters, Chartable was a measurement aggregator. Once upon a time, Chartable allowed podcasters to connect their Apple Podcasts Connect account, and Chartable would ingest verified listener numbers and episode retention data. This functionality was removed shortly after Spotify acquired the company. Chartable’s Spotify integration remains.
For podcasters who relied on Chartable as an easy way to see both downloads and consumption data, there’s good news: several podcast consumption platforms – including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube – all offer the ability to measure verified listeners/viewers and time spent watching/listening.
The bad news, of course, is data fragmentation. Who wants to check 5–6 dashboards every day to understand the full picture of their show or network?
That’s why we built the Bumper Dashboard, a measurement tool that combines podcast data from a number of different sources to allow podcasters to see the true performance of their show. All Bumper clients get access to the Bumper dashboard, and the feedback we’ve received since launch has been overwhelmingly positive.
When Chartable closes in December, enterprise podcasters who have relied on Chartable as a measurement aggregator will be out of luck. I’m obviously biased, but I believe the Bumper Dashboard is the single best replacement for this particular functionality. If you’re interested or would like to learn more, feel free to get in touch.
Pouring one out for Chartable
I have a ton of respect for the team that built and supported Chartable and its customers for the past 6 years.
Dave, Harish, and the entire Chartable team innovated, pushed our industry forward, and shaped the way many people think about podcast measurement and attribution. They inspired and paved the way for many teams and companies that followed, and the fact that in 2024 there isn’t a single drop-in replacement for their service is a testament to what they’ve built.
I’m sad Chartable has reached the end of its life, and I’m grateful for what they’ve contributed to our industry.