This page explains exactly what Listen Now! records when someone plays a track on your store, and how the numbers on your Analytics page are worked out from it. You don't need any of this to use Analytics — it's here for when you want to check a specific number.
What gets recorded
Every time a shopper's browser starts, stops, or finishes a track, the player sends one event. There are exactly three kinds.
| Event | Sent when | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| played | Playback starts — a fresh track, or a resume after a pause. | Sent every time, so one continuous listen can send more than one. |
| paused | The shopper pauses before the track ends. | Not sent when a track ends on its own — that's completed. |
| completed | The track plays all the way to the end. | Only sent on a full, natural finish. |
What each event carries
Every event carries the same details — enough to tie a play to a track or playlist and place it in time, and nothing about the shopper.
| Detail | What it is |
|---|---|
| Track | Which track played, by name and ID. |
| Playlist | Which playlist it played from, if any. |
| Session | Ties one continuous listen together — see below. |
| Position | How many seconds into the track. On a pause, where they stopped. |
| Duration | The track's total length, in seconds. |
| Time | Set by our server when the event arrives, not by the shopper's device clock. |
One listening session
A session is started once, when a track loads, and stays the same through any pause and resume — until the player loads a new track. That's what lets us tell "paused, then came back and finished" apart from "paused and gave up."
A single listen might send four events: played (track loads, starts at 0:00), paused (shopper stops at 0:07), played (resumes minutes later), completed (plays through to the end). All four belong to one session, and it counts as one finished session toward Completion rate — not as two separate plays where only one finished.
How the numbers are worked out
Your Analytics page never shows raw events. Every number is worked out fresh from them for the date range you pick.
| Number | What it means | How it's worked out |
|---|---|---|
| Total plays | Raw volume — how often playback started at all. | Every played event, counted. A resume after a pause counts again. |
| Unique tracks played | Reach — how much of your library got heard. | The number of different tracks with at least one play. |
| Completion rate | Of the listens that started, the share that finished. | Sessions that finished / sessions that started — so a resume-then-finish counts as one success, not a half. |
| Avg. completion (per item) | The same completion maths, for one track or playlist. | That item's finished sessions / its started sessions. |
| Drop-off (per item) | Where in the track listeners tend to give up. | The average position of the last pause in sessions that never came back to finish. A pause that gets resumed and finished isn't counted. |
Good to know
Consent. Events are only recorded from shoppers who've given analytics consent, in regions where consent is required. Shopify enforces this before the tracker runs — nothing is collected around a shopper's preference.
Privacy. Nothing recorded identifies a shopper. No customer ID, name, email, or IP address — only which track played and when.
Small numbers. These formulas are built for volume. On a single test play or a handful of listens, Completion rate and Drop-off can look skewed — they settle down with real traffic.
By design. Total plays deliberately isn't de-duplicated by session — it's meant to show raw playback volume. Completion rate is the number built to answer "did people actually finish?"