23: How to Submit Your Podcast to the Main Listening Platforms

Written By Britany Felix
 
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In episode 21, I walked you through how to set-up your RSS feed in Libsyn. In last week's episode, I walked you through how to add your first "episode" to your RSS feed.

Now, it's the moment you've been waiting for (which is also a moment many wannabe podcasters never reach) ... submitting your podcast to the various podcast listening platforms!

In this week's episode, I walk you through the steps of submitting your podcast to Apple Podcasts (formerly iTunes), Google Podcasts, Google Play Music, Spotify, TuneIn, and Stitcher.

Because this is such an intimidating process for most people, I actually recorded a screen share video while recording this episode in case you're more of a visual learner. Keep in mind, the video is raw so you'll get to hear me in all my unedited glory. Allow me to apologize to your ears in advance. ;)

Click here to watch the video.

Update 1: As of January 2022 when this update is being posted, if you create a new account with Libsyn, it will be an updated version of the platform called Libsyn 5. You can find the show settings, RSS feed settings, and destinations by clicking the gear icon as indicated in the screenshot below.

Update 2: Regarding the platforms to submit your show to, as of January 2022, here’s what’s changed:

You can submit straight to Spotify, Amazon Music (and by default Audible), and Pandora from the “RSS Feed Settings” page inside your Libsyn account. There are also several other new platforms you can submit to directly from your Libsyn account.

You can now also directly submit your show to Google Podcasts. The link has been added below.

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Transcript

Welcome to podcasting for coaches. I'm Britany Felix and I'm a podcast launch consultant who specializes in helping coaches and consultants utilize the power of podcasting as a way to build brand awareness and generate new leads for their business. I realize not every new coach or consultant can afford to hire someone to help launch their show. So I created this podcast as a way to guide you through the process of launching and utilizing your very own podcast to help you grow your business and reach a new audience of adoring followers and potential clients. If you're ready to get your voice and podcast out into the world, head over to podcasting for coaches.com to learn more. Welcome to Episode 23 of podcasting for coaches. In Episode 21, we talked about how to set up your RSS feed, which we're going to need for this episode. And in Episode 22, we talked about adding your episode zero to your RSS feeds that you have a file in it. Now we're going to take the combination of those past two episodes. and combine that with this week's lesson, which is how to submit your podcast to the most popular podcasting platforms. Now for those of you who are visual learners, as I'm going through these steps, I'm going to record a screen share video, so that you can follow along and actually see what I'm doing as opposed to just hearing about it in podcast form. Now for those of you watching the video, I do want to apologize because it will be raw, uncut, unedited. So you're gonna hear me stumble like crazy. And you're gonna get a glimpse of what these episodes sound like before I really go in and edit them so that they sound a little bit more polished in the actual podcast version. So the various platforms that I'm going to talk about today are going to be Apple, which includes iTunes slash Apple podcast, Spotify, Google podcast, Google Play Music, which is completely different from Google podcasts. Tune in, which is the default app for Alexa devices, and Stitcher. So I'm going to go ahead and dive right on into this, because we've got a lot of content to cover today. And you're gonna hear some mouse clicks. But again, that's because I am doing a screen share video for this special episode. So we are going to need your RSS feed to submit your show to all these various platforms to find your RSS feed. Again, I am catering to those who host with Lipson because that is the service that I highly, highly recommend. So if you are Lipson user, and even if you're not, you can find your RSS feed somewhere in your platform, I'm sure it's in your main dashboard, or in your settings, page or destinations somewhere you can find your RSS feed and it looks like just a traditional URL. So in Lipson, you hover over the menu for destinations, actually, you can just click on it. And you'll see at the very top and the quick links that says lips and classic feed and then there's a URL there. So all you do is just highlight and copy that feed. And so we're going to start off with submitting to Apple. Now you're going to go to podcasts with an S connect.apple.com. And that should give you a sign in page and you're going to need your Apple user ID to sign into this, it is incredibly, incredibly important that you use the one you want associated with the podcast. So this needs to be one that you check one that you have access to one that you can always have access to do not have your VA or somebody else submit your show for you ever using any of their accounts. If you don't have an account that you're comfortable with doing that with or you don't already have an apple id go ahead and create one with just kind of a you know info at your business name. com, whatever it is that you want associated with this account in the long term. So log in with your Apple ID. And you're going to if it's your very first time, if you have it fully set up your account yet with Apple, you're going to see a bunch of different options for various sections of the site that you can go to and podcast should be one of them. Now, if you click on that podcast button, and it just loops you back to that same page, you have not finished setting up your Apple account yet. So you need to verify your email address and you need to make sure that you have payment settings entered. So you have to have credit card information in there even if you never plan on purchasing anything. And then it also helps to actually log into the desk top version of iTunes. So not on your phone, not on your tablet. actually go on your computer and log into iTunes your iTunes account with your Apple ID. And it should prompt you there if you need to finish setting up the account or if you need to verify it. Once you do those three steps of verifying it logging in and making sure your payment information is updated, then you should get out of that loop. Or if you already have an apple account that you've already done all this for maybe you've been using Apple for years. What will happen then is you'll be taken to a page where it says iTunes Connect in the top left corner and it should default to a blank screen where it says my podcast. Now you may see that it actually says podcast analytics or some other thing there. If it does, just click on the down arrow and select my podcasts. So on this page underneath where it says iTunes Connect in the top left hand corner, you will see a plus sign so go ahead and click on the plus sign and next set takes you to a page where it says rss feed and then it's a url and a box where you can enter something here all you do is enter in just paste that url that you copied from lipson or whoever you're hosting services and then you click the validate button just to make sure that there are no issues if it comes back that there's an issue that's the whole other set of things you may need to contact apple usually it has something to do with your artwork which we previously discussed in another episode i can't recall the episode number off the top of my head but that's probably most likely going to be an issue if you have it there if it's not that if you've double checked your artwork if you've looked over everything in your feed and everything seems pretty normal reach out to your hosting service or apple and see if maybe they can provide you with more guidance if you've set everything up properly though it should say that the feeds validated and you're good to go and then you can click submit it should bring up another box that asks you if you really want to submit and then you just click yes or okay and you should be good and that's really all that you have to do you should come back and it should say that you have a show that's pending with their platform it can take anywhere from honestly i've had shows get approved within 30 minutes and then i've had a couple other shows that have taken a couple of weeks it just really depends the average time is about 24 to 72 hours if you start hitting the one week mark and you still haven't been approved then it still shows it's pending you can maybe reach out to apple and see what they say but again i would give it at least a week before you used to kind of start panicking and wondering why it's not there and this is exactly why we submit your show with an episode zero which is a teaser or a trailer instead of your real episodes right before you want to have your actual launch so that we have a buffer we have a timeframe where we can have these delays if they happen so once you get an email from apple saying that you have been approved and here's your store id and all of those things again send to the email is associated with your apple account your show typically takes about another 24 hours to actually index and show up in the directories so even though it says your show is live and you can go there with the link if you try to search for your name or your show it still may not show up for about another 24 hours so that actually covers everything for itunes slash apple podcast it's relatively easy once you know exactly where to go and what you're doing i will have links to all of these different platforms and how to submit them in the show notes for this episode so i'm going to have a link to the video i'm going to have links for all of these platforms where you can go to submit your podcast and i'm also going to have a link to a pdf for spotify which i'm going to talk about here in just one second those are going to be found in the show notes by going to podcasting for coaches comm and clicking on the podcast tab and this will be the most recent episode at the top of the page again this is episode number 23 so next we're going to talk about spotify if you host with lipson or any of the other major podcast platforms you can actually submit right from inside that platform itself which is pretty cool if you are not sure if your platform offers a service you can reach out to their support team or you can go to the link for manually submitting your show to spotify via a form that they have that i'll have in my show notes and they have a list of all the platforms that they work with where you can submit your show directly to spotify from inside your hosting service as opposed to manually submitting your show to them so again because i love lipson we're gonna run through the process for submitting your show to spotify for lipson now you do not again need a spotify account in order to do this because it's through lipson which is fantastic so in that same destinations tab where you found your rss feed that's where we're going to go to submit to spotify underneath where you found those quick links and you found your rss feed url you're going to go to the next section where it says all destinations and then there's a little button that says add new so rob walsh who is one of the vps over at lipson actually put together a really handy pdf and if you're following along in the video that's what i'm using it's his pdf so i'll have a link to this in the show notes as well so that you have this really handy step by step pdf to go through when you're ready to submit your show to spotify after you've clicked add new then you're going to click add next to spotify and all of the options that come up for you to add your show via lipson once you do that there are going to be some things that we're going to leave alone so it's going to bring up a new page where it says create new destinations spotify at the very top the very first fields of destination name and it's auto populated with spotify leave that as is in the next section the very next field feed extension and it shows your url forward slash spotify again leave that as is next section is the categories you have three options just use the same categories that you chose when you originally set up your rss feed in the next section you have a subtitle that you can enter you have a summary which is just your show description and there is a 385 character limit for spotify so make sure that you stay within that limit and that does include spaces author is of course going to be your name or you and a co host if you have one of those language if your podcast is in english then that should stay as n content rating you can leave that as an onset that's fine and keywords you can go ahead and add in a list of keywords separated by a comma their contact info under owner name that should of course be your name if you are the owner of the podcast and owner email that should be your email as well next we have an approved section so you absolutely must check this box to say that you have read and agree to the spotify terms of service which is very very very particular about the music that you use it absolutely must be podsafe which means there can be no question as to whether or not you have the rights to use that music which we have also covered in a previous episode so one thing i want to let you know is there is a 42 character limit for show titles on spotify and this does include spaces so if your show title not including a subtitle which is entered in different space if your show title is over 42 characters then we need to click on the advanced options which is right above that terms and conditions approve checkbox click there and you'll have another options for the title and you can enter an eight an alternate title just for spotify that is under those 42 characters spotify just opened up the podcast section of their service earlier this year and they were unbelievably overwhelmed by the amount of submissions they received they do not expect it to be anywhere near as popular as it was so they actually ended up having to shut down submissions for several months while they developed an entirely new system for getting those approved so they have started accepting submissions again but there's not really a set standard time for approval there have been some people who have been approved in a few days and there are some people that still have not been approved from submitting several months ago so unfortunately we just have to submit and we're kind of at their mercy as to when they you know approve the show and it shows up on their platform so next we're going to talk about google play music which again is entirely different from the fairly new google podcasts app that they just released a couple months ago google podcast app is quickly quickly rising in the ranks and is becoming a very popular platform google play music and not so much but it's free and it's pretty easy to get on there so we're gonna go ahead and do that as well so for google play music you're gonna want to click on play.google.com forward slash music forward slash podcast forward slash published which i will have a link in the show notes for this episode and that will take you to a page that says podcast and google play music and you have two options listen or publish so on this page you want to make sure in the top right hand corner that it showing the logo for your correct google email address and you must have a gmail address in order to submit your show to google play music so make sure you have your account selected so for someone like me i have like five different gmail email addresses for personal in various different businesses and for you know va 's and even some of my clients that i've logged into do some things for so i have to be very careful about the account that is selected when i'm on this page because whatever is showing in that corner when you click publish and whatever you carry through to each one of those pages that's the account that the show is going to be associated with and that's the information that you'll need in the future to access it so again make sure that the account is correct and click publish when you go to this next page double check again in the top right hand corner that is still the accurate email address that you want because sometimes it will switch on you and go to a different email address on this second page so again make sure that the correct email address if it's not just click the little drop down and select the right one so then when you're ready to submit your podcast you just click add podcast and then you need to accept the terms of service so in the screen that comes up after you agree to the terms of service there is a box for you to enter the url for your rss feed again that's that same one we got from the destinations tab and lipson and that we used for apple so you're going to put that in the box provided and then click the blue submit rss feed button whenever you do this it'll take you to the next page where you need to verify ownership so it will send you an email in that email you need to confirm that you are the owner of that feed and then account and then if there are no issues with the artwork or anything like that it should say that your status is ready to submit and then you can click on the submit button and that's it your show has been submitted to google play music unfortunately if you have an issue with google play music there's not really a whole lot of people to reach out to because it's google after all and it's pretty much impossible to get a real live human being to interact with you and answer questions google again is one of those platforms where it can take anywhere from 30 minutes to a couple of days to get submitted so you just kind of have to be patient you should get an email letting you know when your podcast is live and giving you a url for your podcast listing now with google play music i don't recommend really sharing that anywhere it's just there in case this is what people use and they want to be able to find you but there are so many other more popular and robust and user friendly platforms that we don't really want to advertise google play music because we have google podcasts now okay so moving on we have tune in as i mentioned at the top of the show tune in is the default podcast app for all alexa devices now if you have ever tried to find a podcast on alexa you know that it is sometimes very difficult alexa has a very big issue with recognizing podcast names and so even if your show is on there it's still very likely that listeners may not be able to find you and that's why in an upcoming episode i'm going to talk about publishing your podcast as a skill in alexa which i've actually done with podcasting for coaches so you can actually add my podcast as a skill if you're familiar with alexa devices and listen to the podcast that way so for tune in which is again the default app that's what we're going to start with for now because the alexa skills a little bit more complex there is just a submission form that you need to fill out and i will have a link of course in the show notes and you need your email address the title of your podcast your name your rss feed url and then they want you to upload a cover image and a banner image so your cover image is your main podcast artwork and a banner image is going to be literally what it sounds like it's gonna be a banner image at the top of your podcast listing on their tune in website which hardly anybody will ever listen to you but we have to have it in order to be approved so those image recommendations are requirements i should say four sizes they have to be jpg or png if you listen to my artwork episode you know that i recommend png and the cover artwork so your square artwork needs to be 1200 by 1200 pixels and the banner image needs to be 1024 by 300 so make sure that you keep those in mind and in this submission form you literally can just click the button that says choose file and upload those images right here country is going to be of course the country that you are based in language of course your language website address will be your website where the podcast show notes are going to be hosted you again have three options for genre so just use the same ones you chose for apple and spotify station email so this should be your contact email again generally it would be good to have this be kind of a generic email so like a contact at or an info at or even podcast at phone number you can choose to put this in or not most of the time i don't when i'm submitting my shows for my clients you can also choose to add your twitter handle here and there's a comment section although you don't really need to do that either unless there's just something crazy with your submission but in all the podcasts i've seen from our clients i've never once heard a comment then you just need to click i accept and agree to the terms and conditions and then check the send email box and that's it so tune in is manual approval as you can tell by this little form here that you have to fill out so it does take a little bit longer again to show up but they will email you and let you know when your show is accessible and provide you with a url and they will actually give you this whole spiel in this email that makes it seem like you should really be using this as your main tool to promote and of course that's because they want more people to use their platform but again it's such a small small small segment of your audience that we don't really advertise that as a main route to go we do put that in the links as you'll see for your show notes of where people can subscribe and you want to mention it occasionally on your show and when you're talking to people about it but again apple podcast google podcast spotify those are going to be your main destinations that you'll really get most people from so next we're going to talk about stitcher and stitcher is again a very very small platform it's very glitchy i really don't enjoy it all that much but there are a lot of holdouts who still use it so when you go to stitchers website you may actually think that you log in at the top of the page or sign up at the top of the page and that is very misleading they have a sign up button there but that is not for you that's only if you want to be a listener so if you are wanting to submit your show you have to scroll all the way down to the bottom of the page into like the fine print with all the different you know legal stuff in the follow social media links and all of their different kind of you know footer section of their website and footer text there is a column that says partners and then you'll see as as partner sign up that's where you want to click so in partner sign up you'll see another page that comes up as content providers at the top and then there is a button there that you can click that says join us and so that's what you want to click and it will open up another page stitcher is also very glitchy in that sometimes it will never let you log into your account ever again which is what it's doing with me you can create account and submit your show in that one sitting and then possibly never be able to log in again this is one reason why i don't really like stitcher but again it's free and some people still use it so why not so if you're following along in the video you will actually see that i cannot log into my account so i have a screenshot here that i took from a client of mine who was able to log in and so it's going to ask you for your information of course your email your name the show's name and it's going to actually ask you for your address and this is for people who are like affiliates or advertisers even if you will have nothing to do with that is a require that you enter in your actual physical address. So the next section is information that you need to type in or interact in order to finish the meeting to secure. So you need your show name, your RSS Feed URL, of course, your language, then you can select a category. And then it asks for your current number of listeners. Well, since this is a brand new podcast, that's going to be zero, then it asks for your Twitter handle, Facebook page, you can put a link there, and then it gives you keywords, there is a limit of 142 characters, and they must be separated with commas. So then you can click through the submission process and just follow the prompts to submit your show to Stitcher. Again, it can take a wide variety of time, so usually a couple of days to get approved. But this will be such a small percentage of where your listeners come from that it is honestly not a huge deal. If it's super glitchy, I went through a period of about nine months where we couldn't submit any one show, it just wouldn't let anyone even create a new partner login. So it's just really not that big of a deal. But if it's here, and you can make it work, why not. So lastly, we are going to talk about Google podcasts. So this is a new app that's come out this summer. from Google, obviously, you can just have your listener search in the Play Store, and they can just search for Google podcasts. And it's actually pretty amazing. I love it, it's very easy to use. And I have so far not been able to find a single show, every one I've looked for including all of my own clients was already on there when the app launched, we didn't even need to submit to them or do anything. So how you get on Google podcast is actually by putting your RSS feed on your website, and vice versa. So when we set up our RSS feed in Lipson, we went to Settings. And in that first little section, there's a section of it that says website address, and we put in the full URL for the website. So that covers that on the Lipson side on the RSS feed side. And then in your show notes, which we're going to actually talk about in next week's episode, I'm going to do a breakdown of the show notes, then why you need them and what should be included in all of those things. But in the show notes, you'll see if you're following along in my video, or if you just want to go to the show notes so that you can get access to all the resources I've mentioned. You'll notice that underneath the player for the episode, I have subscribe links. So I have the player and then it says subscribe, and then it says Apple podcasts, Google podcasts, Android devices, Spotify, I Heart Radio, which you can't get on to immediately you have to have a couple months worth of episodes. So we'll worry about that later. And then at the very end, I have my RSS feed, it just says RSS and it's a link using that same RSS Feed URL. So for those watching the video, you'll see when I click this, and in Episode 21, I actually had a screenshot of this. It's literally just a bunch of code. So Google indexes this, they search the internet, basically for these RSS feeds. And so if you have the RSS feed on your website, and you have your website linked in your RSS feed via Lipson or whatever your hosting services, Google should automatically put your show in their platform. And like I said, it worked for my podcast, both of them actually. And all of my clients podcasts, every single one of them was in there, because they followed my advice with how to set everything up. So there's really no submission to Google podcasts, we just need to make sure that you have the proper things in place. And there's no telling really how long it takes Google to index a new show. Because like I said, when the app came out, we were all already kind of set up in place for it and who knows how long they had been working on it, and really indexing all of the shows before they released the app. So there's no set time that I can tell you to be on there. Maybe just be patient, I would wait at least a couple of weeks, and then maybe try checking on it or following up. But again, it's Google. So good luck getting help. But we can check those two things and make sure that your RSS feeds linked properly and that it is set up in Lipson properly. So super long episode a lot of information, I would imagine the video might be helpful. Again, links to all of these platforms and the PDF for Spotify are going to be in the show notes for this episode of podcasting for coaches.com. Go to the podcast tab and this is episode 23. Thank you so much for joining me this week. I am so excited and so proud of you for reaching this point where you are officially submitting your podcasts to all these platforms. This is one of the most thrilling times in a podcast journey. So kudos to you for making it this far. It is much much farther than most people who ever decide to start a podcast get and you should be proud of yourself and I know that I am and I will see you back here next week, where we are going to really take a deep dive into Episode shownotes. Have a fantastic week. And that wraps up another episode. Go to podcasting for coaches. If you're wondering if now is the right time to start a podcast for your coaching or consulting business, head on over to podcasting for coaches.com where you can either take a free quiz or schedule a one on one consultation with yours truly, thank you so much for joining me today and I will see you back here for the next episode.

 
Britany Felix
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