If stations compare their Live Stats, for say today, and note that at 9:40AM there were 1500 listeners and then check the Webcast metrics reports 4 days later when "Today's stats" are posted, there will be a large difference between what they saw when they originally noted the Real-time Live stats and what the WCM report is showing as CUME for that same day and time.

This is actually correct and expected.

First of all, the Live stats and the Webcast Metrics stats are using two different data sets.  The Real-time Live stats are accumulated from player based  “pings” to our servers when a player is opened.  As soon as the player launch is initiated, the player tells our servers that a connection has been established. 

The Webcast Metrics statistics on the other hand are culled from the streaming encoder server log files.  All statistics reported in the Webcast Metrics reports enforce a 1 minute listening rule.  So, in order to be included in Webcast Metrics each and every listening session must stay open for at least one uninterrupted minute before being counted as a viable session into any of the statistics reported in the WCM report.

The Real-time Live stats do not have such a rule.  So, for that reason alone, there will be differences between the numbers that are counted in the Live stats and the numbers that are counted in the Webcast Metrics reports.

Secondly, and more importantly, the CUME numbers reported in the Webcast metrics reports are based on IP addresses not player sessions.  It is very common for there to be multiple listeners listening from the same office network – which logs onto the internet as one IP address. 

Since the CUME number, being based solely on IP, is an overly conservative measure of listenership, a more analogous metric would be the Active Sessions number (AS).  If you compare the AS to the Live stats you’ll see more of a correlation since this number is more in line with what the Real-time live stats are reporting – although, keep in mind that the AS number also uses a one minute listening rule.  So, we should expect to see some variance between them.