Want to know how to start a podcast on Spotify? You aren’t alone!
Listing your show across the major podcast directories is an essential piece of growing an audience. You can set yourself up for success by submitting your show to the big names first, so it’s important to know how to start a podcast on Spotify when you’re ready to launch your show.
Spotify is a huge platform for streaming music but in 2019 made influential platform updates to appeal to podcasters and their listeners. Edison Research reports 43% of monthly podcast listeners consumed episodes on Spotify, which is why Spotify podcast submission is so important. To capitalize on users discovering your show, first you need to have a live listing.
Ahead, we have a step by step guide on how to submit a podcast to Spotify. You’ll learn about the platform’s specific requirements and follow along with screenshots for the exact Spotify podcast submission process. Let’s get to it.
How to Start a Podcast on Spotify / How to Upload a Podcast on Spotify
- Verify your podcast meets Spotify’s requirements
- Create a Spotify account
- Agree to the terms & conditions
- Enter your RSS feed link
- Verify you own the podcast
- Enter details about your podcast
- Review and submit your podcast
Publish Your Episodes to YouTube Automatically
If you want a big audience, your podcast needs to be available everywhere. Reach your audience on the largest search engine and #1 podcasting platform on the internet — YouTube. Even though it isn’t a music platform, more people listen to audio content on YouTube than anywhere else.
How does YouTube Republishing work?
YouTube Republishing is available in your Castos dashboard. Castos will convert your podcast audio files to beautiful-looking videos using an image as the visual component. You can set whatever image you like, such as your cover art. The same image is used for each video.
After the basic setup, Castos will automatically publish your videos to the YouTube channel and/or playlist of your choice. Set it once and forget about it.
Why publish your podcast episodes on YouTube?
- Bigger Reach – Share your content with a wider audience.
- Zero Resources – Automatic republishing happens when you publish.
- Enhanced SEO – Amp up your SEO results publishing on YouTube.
- Available Free – Included FREE with all Growth & Pro accounts.
How do you set up YouTube Republishing?
All you need to do is create a one-time connection between your Castos account and the YouTube channel of your choice. After that, anytime a podcast episode is published, it will be automatically converted to a video file with your thumbnail image as the background, and published to YouTube for you.
What’s the cost of YouTube Republishing?
YouTube republishing comes standard on all Growth and Pro plans. You can upgrade your subscription settings right inside your Castos dashboard in the My Account -> Republishing tab.
Start Publishing on YouTube
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Important Note about How to Start a Podcast on Spotify
Before we dive into our tutorial about how to start a podcast on Spotify, we want to make something clear: You can’t actually create a podcast on Spotify’s platform. Instead, you’ll need to upload your episodes to a podcast hosting service. The host will provide you with an RSS feed for your show. You’ll give that feed link to Spotify and any other listening app or platform.
In this guide on how to start a podcast on Spotify, we will show you exactly how to deliver that feed link to Spotify.
How to Create a Podcast on Spotify in 7 Steps
Most podcast directories follow a similar process and Spotify isn’t any different. The basic process is signing up for an account, submitting your RSS feed to the service, then waiting for their approval.
To help you understand how to start a podcast on Spotify and navigate the Spotify podcast submission process, we have a checklist of requirements your podcast must meet before submission. Then follow along with our seven step guide with screenshots to officially submit a podcast to Spotify.
1. Verify your podcast meets Spotify’s requirements
The first step in our guide on how to start a podcast on Spotify is to make sure your show meets Spotify’s requirements. Use our checklist below to double check your podcast’s settings:
- MP3 must be in ISO/IEC 11172-3 MPEG-1 Part 3 (MP3) audio with bitrates between 96 and 320 kbps.
- Cover art must be a square ratio (1:1) and be in a PNG, JPEG, or TIFF formats at the highest resolution possible
- The RSS feed must have a title, cover art image, and relevant details for at least 1 episode
- Episode titles and other consumer-facing fields shouldn’t exceed 20 characters to avoid ‘…’ truncation within Spotify’s platform
- Special characters must be HTML coded within podcast titles and descriptions. For example, “News & Politics” should be written as “News & Politics”. (A note: Spotify doesn’t allow for other HTML tags like <bold>. These tags will be removed for your descriptions before publication.)
- Episode length can’t exceed 200MB. (200MB is about 83 minutes at 320Kbps or over 200 minutes at 128Kbps.)
2. Create a Spotify account
Your next step to upload a podcast on Spotify is to visit Spotify For Podcasters and log into your account. If you don’t have an account already, you’ll need to create one before you can move forward with the Spotify podcast submission process.
3. Agree to the terms & conditions
The next screen is where you’ll start setting up your podcast’s listing. To begin, hit the “Get Started” button which will bring you to Spotify’s Terms & Conditions page. Read through the fine print, add your full name, and agree to the Terms & Conditions. Then hit “Continue.”
4. Enter your RSS feed link
The next step in our guide on how to start a podcast on Spotify is to give the platform your RSS link. Head over to your podcast hosting service and find your RSS feed link. Then add the link to Spotify and hit “Next.” If you enter your RSS feed link incorrectly, you’ll receive an error message prompting you enter the correct link.
What’s a podcast RSS feed? It’s a URL that websites and podcast listening platforms use to distribute frequently updated information. The podcast directories monitor the feed consistently and display new information as its added to the feed. If you didn’t use an RSS feed, you would have to manually update each platform every time you create a new episode.
A RSS feed for a podcast is a bit different than one used by a website. To function correctly, a podcast RSS feed needs additional information like a title, description, artwork, category, language, and explicit rating. Whereas an RSS feed for another source wouldn’t require these fields. The standard podcast RSS feed format we all use today was basically developed by Apple Podcasts.
5. Verify you own the podcast
On the next screen, Spotify will verify you own the podcast content you’re submitting. Spotify will send an eight digit code to the email address associated with the RSS feed. This email address is likely the one you used to sign up for your podcast hosting service.
Find the verification email in your inbox, then enter the unique code on Spotify. You have an hour to retrieve the code to verify your podcast. If you miss the window, you can always send yourself another unique 8-digit code. After verifying you own the podcast, hit “Next.”
6. Enter details about your podcast
The next step to submit a podcast to Spotify is to enter a few details about your podcast including in which country your podcast is made, its primary language, your podcast hosting provider’s name, and the podcast’s primary category.
After choosing a primary category, you’re then able to elect three sub-categories. Spotify also allows you to choose 2 more overall categories with their own sub-categories. If your podcast spans a wide range of topics, it’s worth adding additional category fields. This way your show will appear in more relevant places as Spotify users use the platform to discover new podcasts. After completing each field, hit “Next.”
7. Review and submit your podcast
Your final step in our tutorial on how to start a podcast on Spotify is to review all of the information you submitted. Take care in going over the details as you can’t edit this once you hit submit.
When you’re sure everything looks OK, hit “Submit.” After you hit this button, Spotify has officially received your podcast! It typically takes a few hours for their team to review the information and set your podcast’s listing live. Your show will show up in the platform shortly thereafter.
How to Upload a Podcast on Spotify with Castos
We understand the importance of listing your show across every podcast directory at Castos. So we’ve made it extremely easy for you to submit a podcast to Spotify in just a few clicks. You can complete the Spotify podcast submission process in just a few steps. Below is our three step guide with screenshots on how to set up your listing.
1. Log into your Castos account and click “Settings” for your podcast
First, log into your Castos account and for the podcast that you’d like to submit to Spotify click the Settings button:
2. Choose the Distribution menu item
Within the Settings page click Distribution to open up the options around automated distribution of your podcast to directories:
3. Select the Spotify direct integration option
On the following screen, click the “Find Out More” button to be guided to Castos’ direct integration with Spotify. There you will be able to automatically submit your show to Spotify in realtime. Once the podcast is approved by Spotify, it will appear on their platform with all of your show’s details.
4. Click “Submit To Spotify”
Here you will see a list of all podcasts within your account and their Spotify submission status. If your show has not yet been submitted to Spotify you can do so by clicking the “Submit to Spotify” button.
4. View your podcast in Spotify
Just moments after submission your podcast will be live in Spotify. You can view a link to your podcast in Spotify by visiting the Website -> Subscribe Links menu item for the podcast you’re working on.
And that’s it! Your Spotify podcast submission is complete! You’ve officially submitted your podcast to Spotify in just three clicks.
Automatically publish your episodes to dozens of podcast directories
With Castos you can send all of your podcast content directly to directories like Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, and many others.
Meet your audience where they already listen to podcasts!
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Now You Know How to Upload a Podcast to Spotify
In this tutorial, you learned how to start a podcast on Spotify. Follow these steps carefully in order to make your show available on one of the largest podcast listening platforms in the world.
Have questions about how to start a podcast on Spotify? Let us know in the comments.
Hello Craig,
Thank you for your insightful information gathered here. I found it quite useful! My friend and I are thinking of starting a podcast based on motherhood with all the craziness in between…
I am quite new to the whole podcasting world, but do enjoy listening to them whilst cooking, walking etc….
I am wondering though, is this an endeavor that we could potentially make a profit out of? She and I work a ton, but would love a side project/side job that lets us vent and connect with others such as ourselves and others going through the same situations.
Please let me know how to go about this, it would be greatly appreciated!
would you also recommend we start a youtube page and an account on insta/facebook to get some followers or audience members?
Please share any other tips into starting this endeavor, as we are quite serious into starting a podcast.
thank you so much!
Looking for podcasts to get out my message. Controversial sometimes, heart warming others. Please offer direction!
Hi Craig
Thanks for the great article. I followed this and have been happily publishing my audio podcasts to Spotify. However, I tried to publish a video podcast (using the same process but exchanging an mp3 for an mp4) and it isn’t showing up in Spotify. Do you have any guides on video podcasts or any trouble shooting articles that might help?
Thanks
Alice