How to store usage data for audio platform

Need help Database
1

Hi
My app provides audios to users, similar to Spotify.
For a better understanding of how users interact with the audios, I’d like to store more data like:

  • how many times, by whom and when an audio has been listened to.

Is it preferable to add a dedicated data type (e.g. Audio_Played) just for this use and record each event as a new entry, or should I add fields in data type “Audio”?

2

Hi Paulo,
I would create a new datatype to track usage. (but see note about using Google Analytics and alternatives as a different approach)

Lots of reasons including

  • simplify privacy rules - new datatype will have different readability requirements to your Audio tracks
  • updates to this data type can be done from a backend workflow - move the load off the front end
  • you can export your usage data from a single data type (ie from the editor)
  • you can do maintenance on this data type eg delete usage history older than 1 year
  • you could open up this data type with the Data API and plugin some 3rd party tools to read and analyse this data

Another option - if you were very worried about WU, you could unload this “tracking” and use Google Analytics, Plausible … (many many options - which is best is a whole other conversation) and push metrics into a 3rd party and combine it with other web behavioural tracking.

What I’d probably do - is initially do both - a datatype and something like Google analytics. With a view to ultimately getting rid of the Datatype once the WU usage cost vs 3rd party complexity cost equation made sense.

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3

OK. All your reasons make it pretty obvious…

About using Google Analytics or Plausible:
How would you track which audios a specific user listened to?

e.g. Plausible’s plugin action just let’s you define a trigger goal. You can’t really send any additional data.

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4

In GA you would add a “dimension” - which is an attribute of your data - eg if what happened in your app is ;

Bob listened to “Taylor Swift” 2 times.

The event is “listened”
The attribute is “Taylor Swift”
The metric is 2

https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1033861?hl=en#

You can do this in a plugin - many available - I obviously prefer my plugin :slight_smile:

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