What is healthy watch time retention rates?

[JayManOurMusicBox]

I have a problem that I doubt will resolve but out of curiousity what is the average watch time and retention rates? My channel is a free music channel and users tend to skip until they find the right track. So they do in perhaps 20-30 seconds out of 2 mins plus and they are off. Does YouTube measure them by percentage or overall number of minutes?

 

[GrgakGames]

I'm going to think overall....right?

I might be wrong but that seems like the more viable option then just percentage.

 

[Winger94]

If I understood your question they are counted both: for the watched time are counted the seconds watched while for the retention rate is counted the % of the video seen (for example if they see 30 seconds out of 2 mins it's something like 25% of video seen).
Technically there isn't a proper definition of an healthy watch time or retention rate, because when we have small channels unless you have some astonishing content to show people will rarely stop and watch the entire video, long of short whatever it is (like happens to me...).
But that isn't entirely bad because it can give us "time" to improve the quality of our video before being noticed by potential viewers and subscribers!

 

[JayManOurMusicBox]

Thanks for your insight.

 

[Lightsen]

if they are skipping through your own videos that's good though, session watchtime is very important