How to distribute your podcast to Apple Podcasts, Spotify etc

Distributing Your Podcast For The First Time

Once you have created your podcast on Transistor and have at least one episode or trailer published, you can submit your show to any podcast directory that accepts RSS feeds.

We have created a Distribution page that makes it easy to submit your RSS feed to the top 20+ directories. You can work down the Distribution page for your show and follow the steps needed for each platform.

Once your show has been submitted and approved in those places your Distribution page becomes a place where all of your links to your listing pages are stored.

Watch our video: How Podcast Distribution works.

Note: You only need to submit your RSS feed to Apple Podcasts, Spotify etc once. After that those platforms will automatically pick up every new episode you publish.

Once you've set up your podcast on Transistor, we recommend that you submit to these public directories:

Apple Podcasts – many podcast directories use Apple's directory as their “master copy.” If your show is on Apple Podcasts, it will automatically show up on many of the other directories like Overcast, Castro, Castbox, etc. Here's our Apple Podcasts submission guide.

Spotify – Spotify has quickly become a major player in the podcast space.

Pocket Casts – Pocket Casts is a popular player, now owned by Automattic.

What happens after you submit your podcast?

After initial submission is completed, every time you publish a podcast episode on Transistor, it is immediately put into your RSS feed ready for podcast directories to pick up. The full process looks like this:

How podcast distribution works

You create a new episode on Transistor, and upload your audio file (which we convert to MP3).
When you save and publish your episode, Transistor updates your podcast's RSS feed.
Once your RSS feed is updated, podcast apps (like iTunes) detect the new episode and update their directory.
Anyone subscribed to your show via those podcast apps will automatically see the new episode in their library.

Is publishing instant?

It can take up to 24 hours for new episodes to be picked up across all podcast directories.

When you publish an episode on Transistor, the MP3 is instantly available in your RSS feed. So if you share the episode using Transistor's share pages, podcast website or embed players, people can listen right away.

However, it can take a while for your episode to appear in individual podcasting apps like Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Their aim is to pick up new episodes within 24 hours. Usually it's much quicker than this at between 4-6hours. They don't consider an episode as late until 24 hours have passed.

James Cridland, from Podnews, explains why:

Podcasting works using an RSS feed, which is essentially a list of your episodes. A podcast app will, every so often, pull down a new copy of your RSS feed - and see if there’s a new episode of your podcast in there.
> So, podcasting is PULL, not PUSH. When you upload a new episode of your podcast, you need to wait for the various podcast apps out there to pull your RSS feed. And that’s fine, most of the time. Usually, podcast apps (or the servers they’re connected to) will check your podcast RSS feed every few hours, and everyone’s happy.

If your episode isn't immediately available in podcast apps, that is completely normal. It should appear within a few hours.

If you have any concerns over your latest episode not showing several hours after publication you can reach out to our support on Live Chat or by email to support@transistor.fm

Updated on: 14/11/2024