Increased Listeners Reported in Real Time Statistics affecting some stations

Reason for Outage: Inflated Listener Statistics

Summary

Between 7 and 10 October 2026, the listener statistics shown in your Radio.co dashboard were higher than the real number of people listening. Your stream itself was not affected: listeners could tune in and hear your station as normal throughout. The cause was an update we made to the system that produces your statistics. Your statistics are designed to leave out very brief connections, such as apps and automated services quickly checking a stream, so that only real listening is counted. The update let some of these brief connections slip through and be counted as listeners. We reversed the change, removed the incorrect figures and recalculated your statistics. All figures were fully corrected by 14 October. We are sorry. We know many of you rely on these numbers to understand your audience, report to sponsors and plan your programming, and for several days they were wrong.

When it happened

The problem began on Tuesday 7 October. We found and reversed the cause on the morning of Thursday 9 October, about 48 hours later. Correcting the figures already recorded was completed on Tuesday 14 October.

• Wed 7 Oct: we released an update to the system that counts listeners, and the problem began.
• Thu 8 Oct: listener figures across the platform rose sharply.
• Fri 9 Oct: we reversed the update. Live listener figures returned to normal for almost all stations.
• Sat 10 Oct: live figures were corrected for a small number of remaining stations, and we began recalculating past figures.
• Tue 14 Oct: all past figures were corrected.

Who was affected and how

All stations were affected to some degree, though some saw much larger increases than others. Across the platform, reported listeners were roughly two and a half to three times higher than reality at the peak. During the incident, the following could show figures that were too high:

• Live listener counts
• Listener totals and charts for the affected period
• Unique listener counts
• Listener counts for individual tracks in your history
• Average listening time
• Bandwidth and usage figures

What was not affected:

• Your stream. Listeners could connect and listen normally the whole time.
• Statistics from before 7 October.

If you looked at or exported statistics covering 7 to 10 October before 14 October, those figures may have been too high. Please refresh or re-export them; the figures now shown are correct.

What went wrong and how we fixed it

On 7 October we released an update to the system that produces your listener statistics. Normally, very brief connections to your stream, such as apps and automated services checking it, are filtered out so that only real listening is counted. The update caused some of these brief connections to slip past that filter. Instead of being ignored, they were recorded as listeners who had stayed tuned in for hours, and over the following day the figures climbed.

We fixed it in three stages:

1. Stopped the cause. On 9 October we switched off the update and went back to the previous, reliable way of counting. New figures were correct from that point on.
2. Removed the incorrect figures. We set aside the brief connections that had wrongly been counted, so they no longer count towards your statistics. Live figures recovered for almost all stations as soon as the update was reversed, and for the few remaining stations by 10 October.
3. Recalculated the past. We rebuilt every affected statistic for the period from the corrected records, checking the results against the weeks before the incident. This was completed on 14 October.

What we are doing to stop it happening again

The update that caused this has been withdrawn and will not return until it is proven safe. We are also strengthening how we look after your statistics, so that any problem like this is spotted and put right quicker, whatever its cause.

• Fixing the underlying fault. We are correcting the fault before the update is reintroduced.
• Automatic alerts. We are improving monitoring that alerts our team straight away if listener figures look unusual.
• Faster aggregation. We are improving how quickly we can re-aggregate figures if they ever need it.

Our commitment

Accurate statistics are a core part of what we provide, and we fell short of that standard here. We have learned from it, and the steps above are designed to stop this happening again and to catch other problems sooner. If you have questions about your station's figures, or would like help checking a report you shared during this period, please contact our support team at help@radio.co. Thank you for your patience during this incident.

We've now resolved the incident. Thanks for your patience.

A reason for outage report will be processed and published here once available.

Realtime listeners have now returned to expected levels on affected streams.

The development team continue to work on reprocessing historical statistics for the last 3 days.

Once complete, we will set this incident to resolved.

Thanks for your patience and once again, apologies for any inconvenience caused.

Our development team is still working on this issue affecting some stations broadcasting on S2 or S3 listen links.

Today you may see a reduction in the inflated Real-Time listener figures. We will be working on restoring the correct listener figures, and correcting any historical analytics over the next 48 hours. Our Weekly digest email has been suspended and will be re-issued once the issue has been corrected.

Further updates will be provided when we know more.

Once again we apologise for any inconvenience caused.

This is still being investigated by our development team.

We apologise for the delay, we will provide a further update once available.

We're aware of an issue currently affecting some stations, where listener numbers are inflated above usual levels.

We're currently investigating the issue, and will provide further updates shortly.

Thank you for your patience.