For: Releasing artists (RA), earning artists (EA), and label managers (LM) You'll need: At least one release that's live on streaming services Time: 5 minutes
Your Analytics page summarises how your music is being played, downloaded, and paid for. This article defines each headline number so the rest of the page makes sense.
Quick answer
The top of Analytics shows four to five headline cards: Streams, Qualified plays (only when you're looking at Spotify or Apple Music), Downloads, Listeners, and Earnings. Each one counts a different thing — they are not interchangeable. Pick the metric that matches the question you're actually asking.
Step-by-step
Open Analytics from the sidebar.
Pick a release (or "All releases") and a date range at the top of the page.
Optionally pick a streaming service from the lens selector — this filters every number on the page to that platform.
Read the headline cards using the definitions below.
Scroll down to the trend chart to see the same numbers plotted over time.
The metrics, defined
Streams — every time someone pressed play on one of your tracks, regardless of how long they listened. This is the broadest measure of reach.
Qualified plays — streams that lasted at least 30 seconds. This is the threshold most streaming services use to count a play as royalty-eligible. Qualified plays are always lower than total streams. Only shown for services that use this rule.
Downloads — paid downloads of your track (e.g. iTunes purchases). Many platforms no longer offer this; expect a small number or zero.
Listeners — an estimate of how many distinct people listened to your music in the selected period. One listener can generate many streams.
Earnings — your share of royalties for the selected period, before any pending-to-cleared adjustments. See 3.6 Pending vs cleared for the difference.
Why it works this way
Streaming services each report data slightly differently, so we standardise the headline cards to the most meaningful numbers across all platforms. "Qualified plays" only appears when the platform you're viewing actually uses a minimum-duration rule — for other platforms it would be meaningless.
Common problems
My Streams number is much higher than my Qualified plays — that's normal, especially for short tracks and playlist contexts. See 5.2 Qualified plays.
Numbers don't match what I see on Spotify for Artists — small differences are expected. The two systems reconcile reports on different schedules.
A recent release shows no data yet — streaming services typically report 2–7 days after the fact. See 5.5 Reporting delay.