Articles on: Podcasting

How to distribute your podcast to Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts

Note: You only need to submit to Apple Podcasts and Spotify 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 (iTunes) – nearly every podcast directory (Podchaser, Overcast, Pocket Casts, Castro, Listen Notes ) uses Apple’s directory as their “master copy.” If your show is on Apple Podcasts, it will automatically show up on most of the other directories.

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

Google Podcasts – Google now has a built-in podcast player on Android. There's nowhere to "submit" your show, however. Instead, you'll need to have a website for your podcast with a <link> element that points to your RSS feed. (Transistor websites do this automatically)

Pocket Casts – Pocket Casts is a popular player, now owned by WNYC, NPR, WBEZ and This American Life.

Submitting to Apple Podcasts is particularly important because almost all of the other popular directories pull their data from Apple.

Google Podcasts will automatically crawl any public podcast feed on the web. You do not need to submit your podcast to them.

What happens after you submit your podcast?



After that's done, every time you publish a podcast episode on Transistor, it automatically gets pushed out to all of the podcast player apps.

The 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?



When you publish an episode on Transistor, the MP3 is instantly available on our server. So if you share the episode using our built-in sharing features, people can listen right away.

However, it can take a while for your episode to appear in individual podcasting apps like Apple Podcasts, Overcast, and Google Play.

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.

Updated on: 12/07/2023

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