In today’s podcast landscape, very few creators are still uploading files directly to platforms like Apple Podcasts or Spotify. With all the quality podcast hosting sites around, there’s no need to waste time uploading every episode to every platform manually. With any hosting site, you have the ability to generate an RSS feed, which you then submit only once to every podcast directory such as Apple Podcasts, iHeart Radio, Spotify, and all the rest. Every episode you publish after that initial setup gets distributed automatically. One correctly configured distribution feed does all the work for you so you can be assured your content is available on all major platforms.
Without the proper distribution mechanisms, you could easily end up with poor metadata, messy or unvalidated feeds, and even missing content. For a financial services firm, that’s a brand credibility problem noticeable before a single episode is even heard by a prospective client or institutional contact.
This tutorial covers what a podcast RSS feed is, what it contains, how to validate it, how to submit it to every major directory, and how to fix the most common problems. It’s written for finance executives who need to understand this infrastructure well enough to make decisions and hold their team accountable.
What Is a Podcast RSS Feed?
A podcast RSS feed is a structured text file that your hosting platform generates and updates automatically every time you publish an episode. It contains everything a podcast directory needs to display your show: the title, description, artwork, episode audio files, author details, and category tags. Submit that one URL to Apple and Spotify, etc., and they pull everything from it, including every future episode.
RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. The format has been around since the late 1990s and remains the backbone of podcast distribution. When you publish episode 47 of your show, you don’t log into Apple Podcasts and upload a file. Your hosting platform updates the RSS feed, and Apple pulls the new entry automatically, typically within minutes to a few hours.
The key distinction between a podcast RSS feed and a standard blog RSS feed comes down to two additional layers of tags. The enclosure tag points to the actual audio file URL for each episode. The iTunes namespace tags, originally defined by Apple and now adopted by every major directory, carry podcast-specific metadata like artwork, explicit content ratings, episode type, and season structure. Without those tags, your feed is basically just a blog page, and directories won’t recognize it as a podcast.
For finance executives, the most important thing to understand early is that you don’t own Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Amazon Music. You own the RSS feed. That URL, and the audio files it points to, are your intellectual property. Choose the right hosting platform, and you’ll have full control of that asset and how it’s displayed across the web. Choose the wrong one, and you may find yourself unable to access all the parameters that contribute to a successful and dynamic distribution strategy.
What Does Your RSS Feed Contain?
An RSS feed is a structured container with two levels of information: show-level metadata that applies to the whole podcast and episode-level metadata that applies to each individual episode. Your hosting platform compiles both into the feed from the fields you fill in on its dashboard.
At the show level, your feed must contain:
- Show title, exactly as you want it to appear across directories
- Show description, typically 1-3 paragraphs, which appears on your show page in Apple Podcasts and Spotify
- Artwork, minimum 1400×1400 pixels, maximum 3000×3000 pixels, JPEG or PNG, under 512KB. Apple will reject feeds where artwork is outside spec.
- Language, typically
enfor English - Copyright, your firm’s legal name
- Category and subcategory, drawn from Apple’s fixed classifications (Covered in detail in the finance-specific section below.)
- Owner name and email, used by directories to verify ownership. This field is visible in the raw feed but is not prominently displayed to listeners, and can be hidden once verified.
At the episode level, each entry in your feed should contain:
- Episode title
- Show notes and episode description
- Audio file URL (the enclosure tag, which is a link to the MP3 or M4A file)
- Publication date
- Episode number and season number
- Explicit content tag (yes, no, or clean)
Optional but worth including from the start: episode-level artwork (useful when your show artwork differs by season), transcript files (these carry real SEO and accessibility value and Apple now surfaces them in search), and chapter markers for longer-form episodes.
You don’t need to know how to write any of this into XML. You simply fill in fields in your hosting platform’s more user-friendly dashboard and the platform compiles the feed. The practical work is entering accurate, consistent information, because whatever goes in those fields is what every directory publishes.
How Does Your Hosting Platform Generate the RSS Feed?
Professional podcast hosting platforms, including Buzzsprout, Captivate, Transistor, Simplecast, and others covered in our guide to choosing a podcast hosting platform, automatically handle RSS generation. You create your show, fill in the metadata fields, and the platform assigns you a feed URL.
On Buzzsprout, for example, your feed URL looks like: feeds.buzzsprout.com/[your-show-id].rss
That URL is what you submit to Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and every other directory. Every time you publish a new episode, the platform adds it to the feed. Directories poll the feed on a schedule, typically every few hours, and pull in new episodes automatically. You don’t touch the directories again after initial submission unless something breaks.
The hosting platform choice matters more than most finance companies realize at the outset, because the platform determines your feed URL. If you switch hosts later, that URL changes. Unless your new host supports a 301 feed redirect, a technical forwarding instruction that tells directories “this feed has permanently moved to a new URL,” every directory listing you’ve built breaks. Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Amazon Music lose their connection to your feed, and you have to resubmit and reapprove from scratch.
This is one of the most consequential early decisions a finance company makes when launching a podcast, and it’s exactly the kind of infrastructure decision The Podcast Consultant guides clients through as part of a full launch engagement. The question to ask any hosting platform before signing up: “If I move to a different host later, do you support a 301 feed redirect from my current feed URL?”
How Do You Validate Your RSS Feed Before Submission?
Do not submit your podcast RSS feed to any directory until you have validated it. Submitting an invalid feed to Apple Podcasts results in rejection, and resubmitting after correction adds days to your launch timeline.
Two tools to use:
- CastFeedValidator.com: paste your feed URL, and it checks for structural errors, missing required tags, and common formatting problems
- Apple’s Podcast Feed Validator at podcastsconnect.apple.com: Apple’s own tool checks against their specific requirements and flags anything that would cause rejection
Run both. They catch different things.
The most common validation errors at this stage:
- Artwork outside spec is the most frequent rejection reason. The image may be too small (under 1400×1400), the file too large, or the wrong format.
- Missing
<itunes:category>tag, which is required. Your feed must declare at least one Apple Podcasts category. - Incorrect MIME type on the audio enclosure. The tag must specify
audio/mpegfor MP3 oraudio/x-m4afor M4A, and some platforms get this wrong. - Missing owner email field, which is required for directory verification.
- Encoding errors, usually caused by special characters in titles or descriptions that weren’t properly escaped.
All of these get fixed in your hosting platform’s dashboard. You change the values in the fields, the platform regenerates the feed, and you re-validate. You never need to edit raw XML.
How Do You Submit Your RSS Feed to Podcast Directories?
Once your feed validates cleanly, submit it to directories in this order: Apple Podcasts first (because Apple’s approval is the technical benchmark), then Spotify, then secondary directories.
Apple Podcasts: Go to podcastsconnect.apple.com, sign in with an Apple ID, and paste your RSS feed URL. Apple validates the feed and reviews your content, typically 24 to 72 hours. Apple’s acceptance is meaningful beyond just one directory. If your feed passes Apple’s validator, it meets the technical standard that every other major directory recognizes.
Spotify: Go to podcasters.spotify.com, create an account, and paste your RSS feed URL. Spotify sends a verification email to the owner email address in your feed. Click the link to confirm ownership, and approval typically comes within hours to a couple of days.
Amazon Music / Audible: Submit at music.amazon.com/podcasts/submit. RSS feed submission takes 24 to 48 hours to review. Worth doing: Amazon’s podcast listener base is large and growing, and the submission takes under five minutes.
iHeart Radio: Submit via podcasters.iheart.com. Review time is variable, typically 1 to 5 business days. iHeart has significant reach with commuter and drive-time audiences, which is worth noting if your target is wealth management clients who consume audio content during commutes.
Podchaser: Submit at podchaser.com/add. This is an aggregation platform used by podcast industry professionals, producers, and media buyers. For B2B finance shows, being listed here adds a layer of credibility that is visible to anyone researching your show before booking a guest slot or planning a sponsorship conversation.
A note on Google Podcasts: Google Podcasts was shut down in 2024. Content previously listed there is now discoverable via YouTube Music if you have a connected YouTube presence, and through standard Google Search indexing of your show’s website. There is no separate Google Podcasts submission step.
After submitting to all directories, save the confirmation email from each one. Note the date. If something breaks later, such as a feed URL change or episodes stopping updates, it’ll be helpful to have those records when contacting directory support.
What Are the Most Common RSS Feed Problems and How Do You Fix Them?
Most podcast RSS feed problems fall into one of five categories. Here’s what causes each and what you do about it.
Feed rejected by Apple Podcasts. Almost always an artwork spec issue, a missing required tag, or a mismatch between the owner email in your feed and the Apple ID you used to submit. Go back to Apple’s feed validator, read the specific error message, fix it in your hosting platform dashboard, re-validate, and resubmit.
Episodes not updating in directories. Directories poll RSS feeds on a schedule, and most update within 24 hours of a new episode publishing. If updates stop entirely, check two things: your hosting platform account status (a billing lapse can suspend your feed), and whether your feed URL has changed. If the URL changed without a redirect in place, directories lost the connection.
Show appearing with wrong metadata. After correcting a show title, description, or artwork in your hosting platform, directories cache the old data for a period. In Apple Podcasts Connect, use the “Refresh Feed” button to force an immediate pull. Spotify typically auto-updates within 24 hours. Amazon Music and iHeart may take longer.
Duplicate listings in Apple Podcasts. This happens when the same show is submitted twice from different Apple IDs or email addresses. Contact Apple Podcasts support to merge the listings. To prevent this, make sure to use one Apple ID, one email, and one submission.
Feed URL changed after host migration without a redirect. This is the most disruptive problem on this list. Every directory listing breaks simultaneously. The only fix is to contact each directory individually, provide your new feed URL, and request that they update the source. Apple Podcasts and Spotify have support processes for this, but it takes time and creates a period without distribution. A well-executed podcast distribution strategy prevents this by confirming redirect support before any migration begins.
What Do Finance Podcasters Specifically Need to Get Right in Their RSS Feed?
Finance companies face considerations that general podcast guides don’t address. Four areas require specific attention.
Category selection. Apple Podcasts uses a fixed category classification, and your choice directly affects which listeners discover your show. For B2B finance podcasts, the relevant categories are: Business > Investing, Business > Management, and News > Business News. Pick the subcategory that most accurately describes your content. A wealth management firm targeting institutional clients should be in Business > Investing, not the top-level Business category. The specificity matters for the algorithm.
Feed ownership and portability. Your podcast episodes are long-term intellectual property. A five-year-old episode of a thought leadership show may still be closing clients. Choose a hosting platform, as covered in the guide to podcast hosting platforms, that gives you the ability to export your audio files and redirect your RSS feed easily.
Contact email hygiene. The owner email in your RSS feed is visible to anyone who views the raw feed file. Use a dedicated podcast management address, something like podcast@yourfirm.com, rather than a personal executive email. This is both a security consideration and a professional presentation standard. For registered investment advisors and broker-dealers, there is an additional dimension: you don’t want a compliance officer’s personal email appearing in a publicly accessible feed file.
Metadata consistency with approved brand language. For regulated firms, your show description and author fields in the RSS feed are marketing copy. Inconsistency between what appears in your RSS feed, your website, and your compliance-reviewed materials creates friction if those materials are ever reviewed. Lock your show description to match approved brand language before you submit the feed anywhere.
“There are compliance hurdles in our industry that you have to be aware of. Missing, not removing a sentence that we asked to be removed from an episode, it’s not just that it could sound funny, but it could actually cause an issue with regulators. Making sure that our partner pays as close attention to details as we would in those situations is super important.”
Colby Donovan, The Meb Faber Show, Cambria Funds
What Finance Podcasters Must Get Right in Their RSS Feed
- Artwork within spec: minimum 1400x1400px, maximum 3000x3000px, JPEG or PNG, under 512KB. Apple rejects feeds where artwork is outside this range, delaying your entire launch.
- Category specificity: select the most precise subcategory available (e.g., Business > Investing rather than just Business). Category choice directly affects organic discoverability to your target audience.
- Feed ownership confirmed: before committing to a hosting platform, verify it supports 301 feed redirects. This single feature determines whether a future host migration is clean or catastrophic.
- Dedicated podcast email address: use podcast@yourfirm.com or similar for the owner email field, not a personal executive email. This field is visible in the raw feed.
- Description locked to approved brand language: for regulated firms, the show description in your feed is marketing copy. Align it with compliance-reviewed materials before submission.
- Feed validated before any submission: run CastFeedValidator.com and Apple’s own feed validator. Do not submit to directories with an unvalidated feed.
Putting It Together
The process has four stages: generate, validate, submit, monitor.
Your hosting platform generates the RSS feed from the metadata you enter. You validate it before touching any directory. You submit the feed URL to Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, iHeart, and Podchaser. Then you monitor feed health: episodes updating on schedule, metadata appearing correctly, no distribution problems.
After that, the feed runs in the background. Publish an episode, and it distributes automatically. The infrastructure becomes invisible, which is the goal.
For finance companies, there’s one additional layer: treating the RSS feed as a brand and compliance asset, not just a technical checkbox. The metadata in that feed is what directories publish. The platform you use determines whether you own and can move that feed. The email address in the ownership field is publicly accessible. These are decisions worth getting right in week one.
Finance companies that launch in-house without specialist guidance tend to encounter the same set of costly problems: wrong category selections that suppress discoverability, hosting platforms without redirect support that turn a routine migration into a three-week support ticket, and feed errors that delay launch and create periods where Apple Podcasts listings go dark. The RSS feed is infrastructure. Set it up correctly once, and you won’t need to touch it again.
The Podcast Consultant works exclusively with B2B finance firms to build podcast infrastructure that runs cleanly from day one, covering hosting platform selection through feed configuration, directory submission, and ongoing production. If you’re planning a launch or cleaning up an existing show, that’s what we do.
“Because you work in comms, people think you can launch a podcast. But these are technical roles that people commit their career to. You guys (TPC) are the experts here.”
Hannah Slow, Capital for Good / More MPE, Columbia Business School Tamer Institute
See how The Podcast Consultant helps finance companies build podcasts that generate real business results. Book a discovery call.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a podcast RSS feed in plain terms?
It’s a structured text file, automatically generated by your hosting platform, that contains all the information directories need to display and distribute your podcast. When you submit the RSS feed URL to Apple Podcasts or Spotify, they pull your show details and episodes from it. Every new episode you publish updates the feed, and directories pick it up automatically.
Do I need technical knowledge to set up a podcast RSS feed?
No. Professional hosting platforms like Buzzsprout, Captivate, Transistor, and Simplecast generate the feed automatically from the fields you fill in on their dashboards. You enter your show title, description, artwork, and other details, and the platform compiles the RSS file. The one thing worth understanding is what each field does, so you enter accurate information from the start.
How long does it take for a podcast to appear on Apple Podcasts after submitting the RSS feed?
Apple Podcasts typically reviews and approves new podcast submissions within 24 to 72 hours of a valid feed submission. Ensure your feed passes validation before submitting. Invalid feeds are rejected and the clock restarts. Spotify typically approves within hours to two days. Amazon Music and iHeart take 24 hours to five business days.
What happens to my podcast RSS feed if I change hosting platforms?
If you migrate to a new hosting platform without a 301 feed redirect in place, your feed URL changes and every directory loses its connection to your show. Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and other directories would show your show as inactive or stop updating it. Always confirm that your new host supports feed redirects before migrating, and verify that your current host will maintain the old URL long enough for directories to update.
Can I submit my RSS feed to multiple directories at the same time?
Yes. Submit to Apple Podcasts first because their approval is the technical benchmark. Then submit to Spotify, Amazon Music, iHeart, and Podchaser in parallel. Each directory requires a separate submission, but the same RSS feed URL is used for all of them.
What categories should a finance podcast select in Apple Podcasts?
The most relevant Apple Podcasts categories for B2B finance shows are Business > Investing, Business > Management, and News > Business News. Choose the subcategory that most precisely describes your content. A more specific category improves discoverability among the target audience. You cannot create custom categories and must work within Apple’s fixed taxonomy.
What email address should I use in my podcast RSS feed’s owner field?
Use a dedicated podcast management email address, such as podcast@yourfirm.com. The owner email field in your RSS feed is visible to anyone who views the raw feed file. Avoid using a personal executive email. For regulated financial services firms, this is also a professional presentation and security consideration.
Why is my podcast not updating in Apple Podcasts after I publish a new episode?
Apple Podcasts polls RSS feeds periodically. Most episodes appear within a few hours. If updates stop entirely, check your hosting platform account status, as a billing issue can suspend your feed. Also check whether your feed URL has changed. If updates are delayed but not stopped, use the “Refresh Feed” option in Apple Podcasts Connect to trigger an immediate pull.
What is the difference between podcast RSS feed validation and directory submission?
Validation checks that your feed file is technically correct: all required tags present, artwork within spec, audio files accessible, no encoding errors. This step happens before submission. Directory submission is the act of giving each directory your feed URL so they can list your show. Submitting without validating first risks rejection, which delays your launch.
Does Google have a podcast directory I should submit to?
Google Podcasts was shut down in 2024. There is no separate Google podcast directory submission step. Your show becomes discoverable through Google Search via standard web indexing of your podcast’s website, and through YouTube Music if you have a connected YouTube channel. Focus your submission effort on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, iHeart, and Podchaser.
Related Articles
- Blubrry Podcast Hosting Review
- Buzzsprout Review: Is It the Right Host for Your Finance Podcast?
- Captivate Podcast Hosting Review
- How to Choose a Podcast Hosting Platform
- Podcast Distribution Platforms: Where Your Show Should Live
- Podcast Hosting Platforms: The Complete Comparison
- Simplecast Podcast Hosting Review
- Spotify for Creators: What Finance Podcasters Should Know