Learning how to publish a podcast on Spotify takes about twenty minutes. Believing that it only takes twenty minutes is the part that takes people six weeks.
I get this question more than almost any other, and it is always asked with a kind of dread. People imagine an application form, an approval process, someone at Spotify listening to their episode and deciding whether it is good enough.
None of that exists. Publishing a podcast means uploading your file to a podcast host. A host is a service that stores your audio and creates an address for it.
You then give that address to Spotify, Apple and everyone else. They do not judge your episode. They just list it.
That address is called an RSS feed, and it is the single thing this whole article is really about. Once you understand it, the rest is clicking.
The Afternoon I Realised How Simple This Was
I came to podcasting from marketing, not from broadcasting. Seventeen years in marketing, no audio background, no idea what any of the terms meant when I started.
My first attempt at publishing took me most of a weekend, because I assumed it had to be complicated. I read about feeds and directories and validators and got convinced I was going to break something.
The second time, helping my wife launch her Hindi recipe podcast, it took an afternoon. Same steps, no fear. That show went on to cross 3.1 million downloads and reach the Apple Podcasts Top 10 in its category.
None of that came from the publishing being clever. It came from the publishing being done.
Since then I have taken roughly 300 client episodes through this same process. It is the same process every time, which is the good news.
Podcast RSS Feed Explained, With No Jargon
An RSS feed is a web address that holds a constantly updated list of your episodes.
That is genuinely all it is. It is a page written in a format designed for machines rather than people.
It says: here is the show name, here is the artwork, here is the description. Then it lists your episodes in order, with a link to each audio file.
Your podcast host creates this page for you automatically. You never write it, you never edit it by hand, and you never have to look at it.
Why this one idea makes everything else easy
Spotify does not store your episodes. Neither does Apple. Neither does any app your listener uses.
They all read your RSS feed and show what they find there. When you upload a new episode to your host, your feed updates, and every app picks it up within a few hours on its own.
So you submit your feed once, to each platform, and then you never go back. That is why "publishing everywhere" sounds enormous and is actually a single afternoon. You are doing one thing repeatedly, not twelve different things.
Here is the whole chain in order:
- You record an episode and export it as an MP3
- You upload that MP3 to your podcast host
- Your host adds it to your RSS feed automatically
- Spotify, Apple and the rest read the feed and list the episode
- Your listener presses play in whichever app they already use
Step four happens without you. That is the part that surprises everybody.
Where to Publish a Podcast: You Only Really Choose Once
The real decision is not where to publish. It is which podcast host to use, because your host is what creates the feed that everyone else reads.
A podcast host is not the same as a website host. A website host stores your web pages.
A podcast host stores your audio files and builds the feed. Plenty of beginners lose a week to this one word, so it is worth being clear about it.
I use and recommend Buzzsprout for most people starting out, because the dashboard is plain and the submission buttons for each platform are right there. Acast is the other one I use, and it has a free plan worth knowing about. If you are in India and want local billing, Hubhopper is a reasonable option.
I go through the differences properly in my guide to the best podcast host, so I will not repeat all of it here.
One rule matters more than which one you pick. Choose a host that lets you take your feed with you if you leave. Any host worth using offers this, and it means you are never trapped.
How to Publish a Podcast on Spotify, Step by Step
Spotify is usually the fastest of the big platforms, and it is often live within a few hours. Sometimes it is minutes.
Before you start, you need three things ready. Your first episode as an MP3 file.
Your show artwork as a square image of 3000 by 3000 pixels. And a show description of about 100 to 200 words.
How to publish a podcast on Spotify: the actual steps
Do these in order, because a couple of them depend on the one before.
- Sign up with your podcast host and create your show
- Fill in the show title, description, category and language
- Upload your square artwork
- Upload your first episode and give it a title and description
- Publish that episode, which makes your RSS feed live
- Copy your RSS feed address from your host's dashboard
- Go to Spotify for Podcasters and choose to add an existing podcast
- Paste your feed address and confirm the verification email
- Check the details Spotify shows you back, then submit
That is it. You will usually see your show appear within a few hours, sometimes the same evening.
One detail that trips people up at step five. Your feed does not exist until you have published at least one episode. If Spotify says your feed is empty or invalid, that is almost always the reason.
The trailer question
You do not need a trailer. It helps, because it gives the platforms something to list while you finish episode two, but nobody is waiting for it.
If you want one, record ninety seconds explaining who the show is for and what they will get from it. Publish it as your first episode and carry on.
How to Submit a Podcast to Apple Podcasts
Apple takes longer than Spotify, and that is normal. Expect anywhere from a few hours to a few days, because a human does look at your submission for the basics.
They are checking that your artwork is the right size, that your description is not empty, and that your episode actually plays. They are not judging whether your show is any good.
The steps:
- Create a free Apple ID if you do not have one, or use your existing one
- Sign in at Apple Podcasts Connect
- Choose to add a show using an RSS feed
- Paste the same feed address you gave Spotify
- Verify the email address listed in your feed, which must be one you can access
- Submit for review and wait
That email verification step is where most delays happen. The email address in your podcast host settings has to be a real inbox you can open, because Apple sends a confirmation link to it.
If you used an address you never check, or a typo, your submission will simply sit there. Check that field before you submit anything.
What to do while you wait
Nothing, and that is the honest answer.
Do not resubmit, do not change your feed, do not email support after two days. Resubmitting resets the queue position, which makes it slower rather than faster.
Use the waiting time to write episode two. It is the most useful thing you can possibly do with those days.
Podcast Distribution for Beginners: The Full List
Once Spotify and Apple are done, the rest take a few minutes each. Most of them just want your feed address pasted into a box.
The ones genuinely worth doing, roughly in order:
- Spotify, because it is the largest single player for new shows
- Apple Podcasts, because it feeds many other apps and directories
- YouTube Music, which now accepts podcast feeds directly
- Amazon Music and Audible, one submission covers both
- Pocket Casts, Overcast and Castbox, popular with heavy listeners
- GoodPods, small but genuinely useful for early discovery
- Gaana and JioSaavn, which matter if you have Indian listeners
Many hosts have one-click submission buttons for several of these, which turns the whole list into about fifteen minutes of clicking.
Do not skip the small ones because they are small. An early listener on a niche app is still an early listener, and those are the ones who tell people.
How Often Your Feed Updates, and What to Do When It Does Not
Once you are listed, every new episode reaches every app on its own. You never resubmit anything again.
The apps check your feed on their own schedule. Spotify is usually quick, often within an hour. Apple tends to take a few hours, and the smaller apps can take most of a day.
So an episode you publish at 8 AM might be live on one app by nine and on another by teatime. That is normal, and nothing has gone wrong.
When an episode really is stuck
There is one situation worth checking, and it has a specific cause.
Say an episode shows on your host's own page but has not appeared anywhere after 24 hours. The usual reason is a publish date set in the future, and scheduling tools do this quietly.
Open the episode in your host and look at its date field. If it says next Tuesday, that is your answer.
The second cause is a file that never finished uploading. Your host will show the episode, but the audio link inside the feed points at nothing, so the apps skip it.
Play the episode from your host's own page before you go hunting anywhere else. Thirty seconds of listening rules out half the possible problems.
The one thing that genuinely breaks a feed
Deleting and re-uploading the same episode.
Each episode carries a hidden identifier, and re-uploading creates a new one. Apps then treat it as a brand new episode, so subscribers can get the same thing twice, and your download numbers split across two entries.
If you need to fix something in a published episode, replace the audio file in place rather than deleting the episode and starting again. Every decent host supports this.
I have seen a show end up with three copies of episode four in the same feed this way. Nobody enjoys that cleanup.
The Mistakes That Actually Cost People Weeks
This is the part I wish someone had written down for me.
Wrong artwork size. Apple requires square artwork between 1400 and 3000 pixels on each side. Make it 3000 by 3000 and you will never think about it again.
A rectangular image is the single most common rejection.
No episode published before submitting. An empty feed gets rejected everywhere, every time. Publish episode one, or a trailer, before you paste that address anywhere.
An email address you cannot open. Apple verifies the owner email in your feed. Use one you genuinely check, not an address you made up for the show and never set up.
Explicit tag left blank. Some platforms reject a feed where this is not set either way. Set it to clean or explicit deliberately, do not leave it untouched.
Changing the feed address later. Move hosts without setting up a redirect and you can lose every listener who subscribed. Their app is still checking the old address.
Most hosts handle this properly when you ask them to, so just remember to ask.
Panicking at day three. Apple review times vary a lot. Three days of silence is not a rejection, it is a queue.
What Happens After You Are Live
This is where the expectations need handling, because the day you go live is quieter than you think.
Your show appears, and roughly nobody notices. That is completely normal and it happens to everybody, including shows that eventually get very large.
My wife's podcast did not have a dramatic launch day. It had a slow build over months, and the growth came from consistency and from people finding old episodes long after they were published. One of my own episodes got about 120 downloads.
Six months later it brought in a client project worth $2,000 (₹1,70,000). Somebody had found it through a Google search, long after I had forgotten about it.
So the day you publish is not the finish line. It is the day your back catalogue starts existing, which is the thing that actually works for you later.
One practical thing to do on day one. Send the Apple and Spotify links to everyone who already knows you, personally, one message at a time.
Not a broadcast post. Early listens from real people who will actually listen matter more than reach.
While you are at it, get your episode titles right, because those are what people see before they press play. I wrote about that separately in the ultimate podcast episode title guide.
If the Order of All This Is the Problem
You may have noticed that this article assumes you already have an episode recorded, artwork made and a show description written.
For a lot of people, that assumption is exactly where things fall apart. The publishing is not hard. Knowing what to do on Tuesday so that Saturday works is hard.
That sequencing problem is what my 7-Day Podcast Launch Challenge is built to solve. It is seven days, in order, each one gated behind the work from the day before, taking you from idea to a published show. Day 6 is distribution day, which is everything in this article, done with you rather than explained at you.
By the time you reach that day, the episode exists and the artwork exists, so the twenty minute job is genuinely a twenty minute job.
Not got as far as an idea yet? Start with how to start a podcast with no experience and come back to this one.
Listen to the Podcast Episode
This week's episode is about the afternoon your show finally appears on Apple Podcasts. I also get into why that moment feels smaller than you expect.
I walk through how to get your podcast on apple podcasts as someone who has now done it many times. And I am honest about the waiting.
The review queue is the bit nobody warns you about, and the temptation to resubmit is real. I explain why resubmitting makes it slower.
There is also a section on the single field that causes most delays, which is the owner email address in your feed. I tell a quick story about a client submission that sat for eleven days, all because of one typo in that box.
What I cover in this episode:
- What an RSS feed actually is, explained in about ninety seconds
- Why Spotify is usually fast and Apple usually is not
- The one field that causes most Apple submission delays
- Why an empty feed gets rejected everywhere
- What to do on the day you go live, and what not to bother with
Three tools I recommend and use myself, whether or not they came up in the episode:
- Buzzsprout for hosting and one-click submission to the major platforms
- Zencastr for recording guests cleanly, with the code thepodu for 30% off Pro
- Descript for editing by transcript when your episodes start piling up
Is the order of all this what is stopping you, rather than the steps themselves? The 7-Day Podcast Launch Challenge hands you that sequence day by day.
[ACAST EMBED — after uploading this episode to Acast, paste the Acast player embed code here]
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I publish a podcast on Spotify for free?
Upload your episode to a podcast host that has a free plan, such as Acast. Then copy your RSS feed address and submit it through Spotify for Podcasters.
Spotify itself charges nothing to list your show. The only cost in the chain is your host, and free tiers exist there with limits on how many hours you can upload each month.
How long does it take for a podcast to appear on Spotify?
Usually a few hours, and sometimes under an hour. Spotify is generally the fastest of the major platforms because the check is automated. If it has been more than 24 hours, the usual cause is that your feed had no published episode in it when you submitted.
How do I submit a podcast to Apple Podcasts?
Sign in to Apple Podcasts Connect with a free Apple ID and choose to add a show by RSS feed. Paste your feed address, verify the owner email, and submit for review.
Review takes anywhere from a few hours to several days. Do not resubmit while you wait, because that puts you back in the queue.
Do I need a website to publish a podcast?
No. Your podcast host gives you a page for your show and a player you can share, which is enough to launch.
A website helps later, mostly because text on a page is something Google can read and your audio is not. Add one when you are ready, not before episode one.
What size should my podcast artwork be?
Square, between 1400 and 3000 pixels on each side, and 3000 by 3000 is the safest choice. It must be square, not rectangular, or it will be rejected. Keep the text large enough to read at the size of a postage stamp, because that is how most people will first see it.
Can I publish the same episode on Spotify and Apple at the same time?
Yes, and you should. Both platforms read the same RSS feed, so one upload to your host reaches all of them. There is no exclusivity involved and no reason to choose between them.
What happens if I change podcast hosts later?
Your new host can set up a redirect from your old feed so that existing subscribers move across without noticing. This works reliably if you set it up properly and keep the old account open for a while. Changing your feed address without a redirect is how shows lose their entire subscriber base overnight.
Why is my podcast not showing up anywhere after I submitted it?
There are three usual causes. An empty feed with no published episode, artwork that is not square or is outside the size limits, or an owner email you cannot access.
Check those three first, in that order. They account for most cases I have seen.
Do I need to submit to every single podcast app?
No, and most of them you never touch. Submitting to Spotify, Apple and Amazon covers the large majority of listeners, and many smaller apps pull from Apple's directory automatically. Add the rest at your own pace over a few weeks.
How many episodes should I have before I publish?
Two or three finished episodes is a comfortable place to launch from, because it gives a new listener something to continue with. One is genuinely enough if waiting is going to stop you. Publishing three at once and then going quiet for a month is worse than publishing one and following it weekly.
Does it cost anything to be on Apple Podcasts?
Listing your show is free, and you only need a free Apple ID. The paid Apple Developer account is for app developers and has nothing to do with podcasting. Your podcast host is the only thing in this process you might pay for.
Can I publish a podcast from my phone?
Yes. Most podcast hosts have a browser dashboard that works on a phone, so you can upload an episode and publish it from there. Recording, editing and publishing entirely from a phone is very doable, and plenty of people launch that way.
The Dread Is Bigger Than the Job
That six weeks of dread I mentioned at the start is the real subject of this article.
The actual work is an afternoon. Upload a file, copy an address, paste it into three boxes, wait.
What takes six weeks is the belief that somewhere in there is a gate you might not get through. There is no gate. There is a queue, and queues clear.
So what is your feed address going to be pointing at on Saturday?
Resources that I recommend
Here are some of the resources that I recommended in this episode and the ones that I recommend in Podcasting.
- Ubersuggest – The Keyword research tool that I recommend
Below are the tools that I recommend for podcasting —
- Buzzsprout – Podcast hosting
- Behringer Audio Interface – You will need an audio interface if you are using an XLR microphone. This is my recommended audio interface.
- Behringer Audio Interface (budget option) – A lower-cost alternative if you're just starting out and want to keep costs down.
- Zencastr – Zencastr is the easiest option to record interviews, both audio-only and audio+video. This is a must for an interview podcast.
- Audacity – This is the best and most feature-rich free audio editing software. It gives you a lot of options while editing your interviews.
- Samson Q2U – My recommended microphone
- Audio Technica ATR-2110x – My recommended alternative microphone
- TidyCal – My recommended calendar and booking solutions
Thank you for joining in
I hope you enjoyed the information that I shared in this episode.
Do subscribe to the show on your favorite podcasting platform in order to stay updated with the latest episodes that I release.
The Podcasting University is available on almost all podcasting platforms. The link to the prominent ones are mentioned below –
Planning to start a podcast?
Then you might want to join my "7-Day Podcast Launch Challenge".
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