Where to Submit Your Podcast
A podcast is not yet a podcast until it's available in most major podcast players. To get your show playable in a podcast player you must submit your RSS feed to certain places.
Top Places People Listen
The largest podcast hosting provider is Libsyn, they produce a podcast called The Feed which they go over stats they are seeing for downloads. Here is where they are seeing the top downloads are coming from.
Top podcast player downloads statistics for June 2018:
- Apple Podcasts 62.8%
- Spotify 6.8%
- Overcast 3.17%
- Castbox 2.2%
- Stitcher 2.1%
- Podcast Addict 2.05%
- Pocket Casts 1.52%
The rest are less than 1%.
The list above is where people listen to podcasts the most. So it will be important to start there for having your podcast listed.
Core Places to Submit
Apple Podcasts
Apple Podcasts, formerly known as "iTunes" is the king of the podcast kingdom. It's so big that most podcast players simply use Apple Podcasts to get new shows. So by having your show listed in Apple Podcasts, it automatically gets published in many other podast players.
Apple Podcasts has a friendly resource center to help you build, test, and submit your podcast.
https://itunespartner.apple.com/en/podcasts/overview
Overcast, PlayerFM, Pocket Casts, and Podcast Addict will list your podcast within a day if it's in Apple Podcasts.
Spotify
Most of the top podcast hosts are integrated into Spotify. So check with your hosting provider on how to submit to Spotify.
https://artists.spotify.com/faq/popular#how-do-i-get-a-podcast-on-spotify
Stitcher
Stitcher recommends filling out the form here to be listed on their platform.
Castbox
Castbox recommends send them the RSS feed in an email to podcaster@castbox.fm.
Google Podcasts
New in 2018 is the Google Podcasts app. Google seems to be putting more attention into podcasts and it's a good idea to make sure your podcast is listed there too.
This process is different from the rest. You don't submit your feed to Google, they find your podcast through your website. But you have to make it discoverable by Google.
A good writeup on how to do this is here: https://podnews.net/article/get-your-podcast-onto-google-assistant
Additional Places to Submit
After you've submitted your podcast to the core places there are other places that you might be interested in posting your show to.
YouTube
YouTube is free, and is the worlds 2nd biggest search engine after Google. Simply by being part of the 2nd biggest search engine can have helpful results. Some hosting providers can publish directly to YouTube for you (like Libsyn). Otherwise you can create a video with just a static image like your show's logo, and the audio from your show. Then publish it to YouTube. Some people only listen to podcasts on YouTube for some reason so being where your audience is helpful.
iHeartRadio
While less than 1% of podcasts are played on iHeartRadio, it's still possible to play podcasts there, so why not submit it.
Simply fill out this form and wait. In my case I had to wait a month for it to be approved.
TuneIn
Fill out this form to submit your podcast to TuneIn