SubmitHub displays an "average listener" number next to most playlists on the platform. It's our best estimate of how many people will actually hear a song added to that playlist.
What the number represents
We calculate a base 28-day listener estimate for each playlist: how many people listen to songs on that playlist during a 28-day window. The number shown on the site scales with how long a curator typically keeps songs in their playlist.
So if a playlist has a base 28-day number of 100, but the curator typically keeps songs in for 90 days, the displayed figure is a range around 320 (100 scaled up by 90/28). The idea: the number you see should reflect the total listeners your song is likely to get during its actual time on the playlist.
What factors into the calculation
Why it might not match your own numbers
Our estimate is an average across songs on the playlist, not a number for any specific song. Your track might outperform or underperform depending on the song, the playlist's current size, and where in the playlist it sits. We deliberately err conservative: we'd rather you beat expectations than underdeliver.
Why hasn't my listener number updated yet?
If your playlist has only recently started picking up, the number will lag behind reality. Two reasons.
First, we work off a rolling 90-day window and trim the outliers at both ends before averaging. A great week still counts, but it gets averaged against the previous three months rather than replacing them. That's on purpose: artists use this number to decide where to submit, so it has to stay stable. The tradeoff is that a real upswing takes a few weeks to show up in full.
Second, we only count songs that have been in your playlist long enough to gather data. Anything under 3 days gets thrown out, and the rest is normalized to a 28-day window. A playlist that started growing a few weeks ago just doesn't have many songs that qualify yet, so the range is built off a small sample. Expect it to read low, and to move around from one day to the next.
One thing worth being clear about: growing your followers doesn't move this number on its own. It moves once songs you've shared start pulling listeners, and that data reaches us.
Want it to catch up faster? The How do I increase my engagement score? article covers the three things that actually move it.
If you want more accurate numbers
The single best way to make sure your playlist's numbers reflect reality is to share your Spotify for Artists data with us. It only takes a couple of minutes, and we walk through it in the Sharing data from Spotify for Artists article.
Long-term: keep sharing music consistently. The more data flows through, the more accurate our estimates get.