How to Get a Podcast on Spotify: At-a-Glance
- If you want to grow an audience around your podcast, you should make it as easy as possible to find, and to listen to.
- That means being available everywhere people are consuming audio.
- Spotify is one of the biggest podcast listening platforms on the planet. It’s quick and easy to make your show available there.
- Here, we’ll show you how to do it via four great podcast hosting services – Buzzsprout, Transistor, and Captivate, & RSS.com
- We’ll also show you how to get access to your Spotify stats, and to find out if your audience are secret Miley Cyrus fans.
- Read on for the full guide…
Why Submit Your Podcast to Spotify?
At the time of writing, Spotify is one of the biggest podcast listening platforms on the planet. It accounts for 26.8% of all downloads on podcast hosting platform Buzzsprout, second only to Apple Podcasts. By getting listed on Spotify, your show’s going to become available to millions of potential listeners, in over 75 countries
The good news, too, is that it’s quick and easy to make your podcast available on Spotify. There are just a few things we need to check in with, first…
Before You Start
There are a few things you need to have in place before you can list your podcast on Spotify.
It might sound obvious, but your podcast already needs to exist. You don’t upload content to Spotify – instead, you create your show and publish your episodes via a podcast hosting provider. We’ll run through how to put a podcast on Spotify via four of our favourite options in just a sec.
When you sign up with a hosting provider, you’ll enter all the key details about your show. These are things like the podcast name and description.
You will also need to upload cover art to be listed in Spotify and other directories. Your cover art should be a 1400 x 1400 JPEG and under 500kb in size. Here’s our full guide to what makes effective podcast cover art, as well as where to get it.
Finally, you’ll need to have at least one published episode in your feed. This doesn’t need to be a full episode, it could be an ‘episode zero‘ or a short trailer.
Once you have all of these things in place, you can tell Spotify about your show, and they can add it to their directory. Here are four different ways you can go about it.
A quick heads up, too, that we use affiliate links for some products and services we think you’ll find useful. Our hosting provider links here are affiliates because we recommend them all highly. If you decide to buy through one, we’d earn a small commission, though at absolutely no extra cost to yourself!
How to Get a Podcast on Spotify With RSS.com
RSS.com allows you to create an account and upload up to one episode for free, but you’re better to opt for their $8.25/month annual plan. This gives you unlimited episodes, duration, monetization features and more.
RSS.com offers automatic distribution to Spotify and other major podcast directories. Once you’ve signed up for an account and uploaded an episode, click the “Distribution” tab from your Dashboard, enable “Automatic Submission,” and then enable Spotify and any other directory you’d like your podcast automatically submitted to.
Use the promo code THEPODCASTHOST to get 2 free months on the standard monthly subscription.
How to Get a Podcast on Spotify With Buzzsprout
You can start using podcast hosting provider Buzzsprout for free, but you’re better to opt for their $12 a month plan. That way, your episodes won’t be deleted after 90 days, and you can upload more content, too. If you use our link to sign up for a paid account on Buzzsprout you get a $20 Amazon gift card.
Once you’ve signed up and created your podcast, you simply need to click the Directories tab, and you’ll see all the places you can get listed.
- Sign up With Buzzsprout (& get a $20 Amazon gift card!)
- Read Our Full Buzzsprout Review
How to Get a Podcast on Spotify With Captivate
Captivate‘s lowest price tier is $17 a month. You can start and run as many podcasts as you like on Captivate. Their payment tiers work by capping the overall number of monthly downloads from all your podcast episodes, combined. For the $17 that number is 12,000 downloads a month. To put things in perspective, here’s a guide on ‘typical’ download numbers for podcasts.
After signing up and creating your podcast in Captivate, you just need to click ‘Distribution’ on the main menu. Again, you’ll see a list of places you can submit your podcast to, and Spotify is one of them.
How to Get a Podcast on Spotify With Transistor
Transistor is another top-tier hosting platform. They offer a 14-day free trial, and their lowest-paid tier is $19 a month. They work the same way as Captivate, so you can run as many podcasts as you like. Your overall combined download limit this time would be 10,000 per month.
To get a podcast on Spotify via Transistor, sign up and create your podcast, then look for the ‘Distribution’ option in the menu on the left-hand side of the page. There, you’ll find all your submission options alongside Spotify itself.
How to Submit or Claim Your Podcast in Spotify
Another option is to use the dedicated Spotify for Podcasters portal. You can log in with any Spotify user account.
Once you’re logged in, you’ll find an ‘add or claim your podcast’ option when you click on your name.
You then just need to paste in your RSS feed – this is a unique URL for your podcast. You’ll find it in your hosting provider dashboard.
If your podcast is already listed in Spotify, you can also use this method to ‘claim’ it. This lets you see your show’s Spotify stats, demographics, and some other useful info.
When claiming an existing show in Spotify, they’ll send an email to the address associated with your podcast hosting account. That’ll give you instructions on how to verify and confirm everything.
Spotify Podcast Stats
Once you’ve claimed your podcast in Spotify, you can despair in the fact you’ve discovered yet another place to obsessively check stats. Remember, these are only stats from Spotify, and not other listening platforms like Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, etc.
You’ll even get to see the guilty listening pleasures of your audience in the ‘Artists they’re listening to’ section. This is based on the most streamed artists of the past 28 days. I had someone called Billy Eyelash as my audience’s top pick. I’ve never heard of them.
There are demographic stats too, which might come in handy for things like sponsorship. You can also look at episode stats to see completion and listener drop-off rates, which can give you a useful sample in identifying segments of your show that hold attention, as well as the bits that have your listener reaching for the skip forwards button.
Sharing Your Spotify Links
You can also grab the direct link to your Spotify podcast listing once you’re listed in there.
You can do this in both the Spotify desktop and mobile apps.
To get your show’s link in the desktop app, click the little ‘more’ button (the circle with 3 dots in it) to the left of the ‘Play’ and ‘Follow’ buttons. Then click ‘Copy Show Link’.
In the mobile app, the ‘more’ button is up in the very top-right corner of the screen. Again, it appears as 3 dots. Click it, then click ‘Share’, and then ‘Copy Link’.
Add these links to the subscribe page on your podcast website – make it easy for your listeners to find your show anywhere audio is consumed.
Don’t Hang Around
Millions of people are listening to podcasts on Spotify right now. If you’ve launched your podcast, then you should make being listed there a priority. There are also some other key directories worth spending time submitting to, too, and you’ll find a list in the handy guide we’ve linked to, there.
If you’ve not started your podcast yet, then our podcast launch course can get you there quickly, with no stone left unturned. In Launch Essentials, Colin walks you through the entire process, from defining your target audience to equipment and software. Take a look and see if it’s for you.
What Our Readers Think About How to Get a Podcast on Spotify – Quick & Easy Walkthrough!
A quick note re: Buzzsprout and the confirmation that the podcast “doesn’t contain any copyrighted material” – I can only presume that means material copyrighted by *someone else*?
Since creators own the copyright to their own works, so the podcast itself is copyrighted from its creation – by the owner who is submitting it.
Hi James, that’s right yes. Spotify would be pretty empty otherwise 🙂
Why do I need to go through a hosting company? I am an independent publisher, I host my own podcast I am not making money why do I need to pay?
You’d need to reach out to Spotify and ask them Andrew. Because they’re new to podcast curation but are also a very busy platform they likely see this approach as more efficient, easier to maintain, and less likely for things to break.
Do you need to pay to upload to Spotify?
Podbean does not have spotify under the social share.
I don’t see a Social Share button either…..
If I have a podcast that plays movie clips, would that be considered copyrighted material that wouldn’t be allowed on Spotify?
How do you manage it once your host has got you on Spotify? If I move host I’ll want to keep my Spotify listing.
If your podcast is not hosted by one of the above providers, you ll need to submit your podcast to Spotify through their new Spotify for Podcasters dashboard.
Hey guys. Thank you so much for this info. I didn’t knew about Spotify opening up!! This is wonderful news
Do you get paid when people download any of the content? Like they do for music.
ok so I have a spotify account to listen to music but I am trying to also add podcasting to it but when I go on podcasters for spotify it says I need an RSS feed and don’t know what to do someone please help me!