Apple Podcasts is one of the three largest podcast listening apps on the planet. If you’re starting a podcast, you will want to submit your show to Apple Podcasts to make your show accessible to the roughly 1.8 billion apple devices worldwide that pre-install the Apple Podcasts app.
To upload your podcast to Apple Podcasts you have to set up a podcast hosting platform and submit the RSS feed from your hosting site to Apple podcasts connect.
In this blog, we’ll walk you step-by-step through the process to submit your podcast in no time.
How To Submit a Podcast to Apple podcasts (Overview)
Make sure your podcast’s RSS feed is optimized for Apple Podcasts before you upload.
Here’s a short list of the assets you need and the technical requirements they need to fulfill.
Assets You Need:
Apple Podcasts’ Technical Requirements
The first thing you’ll need to do to submit a podcast to Apple is to sign up for a podcast hosting platform to generate an RSS feed for your show.
There are a lot of great options available (over 100 actually) but we recommend getting started with RedCircle (free), Transistor, or Buzzsprout.
We recommend that you create a brand new Apple ID account for your podcast because it separates the podcast from your personal Apple ID account to keep things clean and professional.
If you try to go into Apple Podcasts Connect it will say “You need to finish activating your Apple ID before you can use it on Apple Podcasts Connect.” You are required to log into that Apple ID on Apple Music, accept their terms and conditions, and add your billing address before you can activate your Apple ID and submit a new podcast.
Follow these steps to activate your new Apple ID:
If you don’t want to set up a new Apple ID you can save yourself a few minutes of time and just use your existing personal Apple ID.
Once you have your new Apple ID set up, log into Apple Podcasts Connect.
Fill out the short form and accept the terms of service to gain access to the app.
When you first open the dashboard the account will look blank.
The app takes a few minutes to process the information that was submitted from the RSS feed. Wait 3-5 minutes then refresh the page. You should see a new button appear next to the save button that says “publish” whenever the processing is completed.
After you click “Publish” the status of your show will switch from Draft to Published in the top left corner.
Your show will be manually reviewed and should go live in Apple Podcasts within the next 3-8 days. In our experience, every podcast takes a different amount of time to get approved by Apple. But if your show isn’t available after 10-12 days, you can reach out to Apple Podcast’s support team for help.
Once your show has been manually reviewed and approved by Apple you’ll get an email notifying you that the show is live. The podcast should be live on the Apple Podcasts app and the web version as well.
Image Source: Apple
Apple Podcasters Program is a new program inside of Apple Podcasts that lets creators pay $19.99/yr to create a paid podcast subscription to monetize their show. This new program is super flexible and gives you total control over your monetization strategy, what benefits you provide listeners, and how much you charge.
Here are a few high-level things you need to know about Apple Podcasters Program:
Apple's subscription program is very robust and easy to set up, but it’s not the only way to make money on your podcast. You can also set up a paid podcast subscription for listeners on Supercast, Patreon, or Glow.
Learn more about Apple Podcaster’s Program and watch an in-depth 14-min tutorial video here on Apple’s site.
Apple has put together a set of really helpful resources for podcasters that you can take advantage of for free on the Apple Podcasts for Creators site.
You can start a podcast on Apple for free by signing up for a free podcast hosting platform like Redcircle to generate your RSS feed, submit that RSS feed one time on Apple Podcasts Connect, then wait for it to be manually approved within 3-8 days.
Yes. It’s free to add your RSS feed to Apple. However, you may need to pay for your podcast hosting platform unless you use a free service like Redcircle or Anchor. Additionally, if you want to create a subscription podcast you’ll need to pay an annual fee of 19.99 USD or 24.99 CAD.
It’s free to upload a podcast via an RSS feed to Apple Podcasts, but if you want to start a paid subscription podcast you’ll need to pay an annual fee of 19.99 USD or 24.99 CAD.
It depends, but typically episodes that are scheduled in advance will go live very close to the actual time you set (ex: 5 AM EST). Apple regularly refreshes its RSS feeds to pull in the latest information every day, so sometimes changing something in your podcast hosting platform will take a few hours or up to a full day to go live. You can learn more on Apple’s site here.