hitcounter doesn't count 'direct' downloads

Is there a simple way to add the hits for audiofile download to the hitcounter? I am using the sermonlist view and want the sermon-detail view to be non-accessible. But with that config the counter doesn't count, even if someone listens to or downloads a sermon.

The hitcounter is a bad statistics tool anyway as it only tracks pageviews.

You can use Google Analytics if you want to see downloads and if someone listens to a sermon using the player, there are a lot of modules and plugins available for Joomla which include the code on your page. You can then enable support for Google Analytics in the SermonSpeaker options. However that still doesn't track people listening to the sermon using a podcast reader like iTunes.

A real statistics can only be done using the server logs. There are various tools which do that, one of the popular ones is Awstats .

if you want to keep track of podcast you can use Google feed-burner. it has options to keep track of downloads and views. all you have to do is pass RSS feed through feedburner. probably is you'll have resubmit podcast to itunes using feedburner feed. Good news is that once you sumit it once you can modify your original feed if it changes without any issues.