Podcast Stats Delay: What happened?

As many Buzzsprout Podcasters probably noticed, Buzzsprout experienced a delay with statistics on Thursday, November 2nd, and Friday, November 3rd. All download data was delayed from about 6:45 am EST on November 2, 2023, through 11:30 pm EST on November 3, 2023. During this 40-hour window, Buzzsprout’s primary source for podcast statistics did not report data as expected.

At Buzzsprout, we value transparency and communication, so we want to take the time to give our podcasters some insight into this delay, how it happened, how it was resolved, and where we stand now. 

How it happened

Buzzsprout uses Cloudflare to gather download data for our Buzzsprout podcasts. Just before 7 am on Thursday, November 2nd, Cloudflare began experiencing and investigating some issues related to logging download data. At that point, Buzzsprout was no longer receiving logs and could not process those statistics for our podcasters. 

While stats were not being reported in Buzzsprout, this did not affect the availability of podcast episodes.

Late in the evening on Friday, November 3rd, Cloudflare resolved the issue, and statistics resumed flowing from Cloudflare to Buzzsprout. Buzzsprout has never experienced a statistics delay like this since we launched in 2008. 

If you are interested in the technical specifics, please look at Cloudflare’s update: Post Mortem on Cloudflare Control Plane and Analytics Outage. 

How it was resolved

We know that statistics are very important to our podcasters, so for several days following the outage, the Buzzsprout team worked to update Buzzsprout accounts with accurate statistics for the delayed period. 

Buzzsprout has multiple layers of redundancy in our server architecture, which puts us in a good position to backfill the missing download data. That process has taken multiple days to implement and apply to all Buzzsprout podcasts. 

Where we stand now

We have gathered and applied all the downloads that were delayed on November 2nd and 3rd. We can also confirm that this delay only affected download data within this 40-hour window. Statistics reported outside of this window were not affected. 

If you believe your podcast data requires further investigation, please feel free to reach out to our support team. They would be happy to look into your podcast and answer any questions you have. They can be reached via email at support@buzzsprout.com.

We understand how important podcast download statistics are for you as a creator. We sincerely apologize for this delay and any stress it may have caused.

Thank you for your understanding and patience,

The Buzzsprout Team