Episode Metadata

Uploading a new episode? Here is all you need to know!

Audio file*

Audio file up to 200MB in size and in either of the following encodings:

Although audio/x-m4a are significantly smaller, note that Spotify does not support them.

Title*

The title of the episode should be clear and concise.

You should not repeat the podcast's name in the episode title. Also, some platforms, such as Apple Podcasts, discourage you from repeating season number or episode number in the title; however, many popular podcasters do just that, so who are we to tell you!

Cover art

You may include a custom cover art for the episode. These are square images that are shown in podcatchers when users listen to your podcast. The cover art should:

If you need inspiration, take a look at episode cover arts of the top podcasts.

Description

In many podcatchers, this will be presented as “show notes.” You can tell the listeners what the episode is about, add useful links, call to action, etc. If you wish to include hyperlinks or other type of text formatting, consider using Markdown.

Many podcatchers also recognize timestamps. For example, to mark a point at 15 minutes and 33 seconds, you may write

(15:33) Discussion on space travel

You can read more on timestamps here.

Season and episode* numbers

These may influence how your episodes are ordered in podcatchers. If your podcast is of the “serial” type, you will be required to specify the episode number.

Explicit content?*

This will default to whatever you specified when creating the podcast, but you are free to change it.

Episodes marked as explicit will not be shown to children on most podcatchers. Also, such episodes may become unavailable in some territories.

Episode type*

  • Full: normal episode.
  • Trailer: clip that may be shown on your podcast's page in a podcatcher.
  • Bonus: extra content of your podcast, e.g. behind-the-scenes clip.

Corresponding webpage URL

Webpage associated with the episode. On a dedicated page, you may include additional information that cannot be displayed in podcast players.

v2.0Transcript

You can attach a transcript in HTML, JSON, SRT, WebVTT, or plain text format. If proper timestamps are present, the transcript will be marked as a closed captions file signalling to podcast players that support it.

We have a separate article just for transcripts, including how to produce one using free or paid services.

This is part of Podcasting 2.0 standard and is currently supported only by some platforms.

v2.0Chapters data

You can attach chapters data in JSON format. This is similar to YouTube's video chapters, which break up a video into sections. Read more about podcast chapters here.

In the future, we plan to add the possibility to create chapters within the RSS Blue interface. This will likely include the option to add images to each of the chapters.

This is part of Podcasting 2.0 standard and is currently supported only by some platforms.

v2.0Place discussed

If you wish, you can describe the location of editorial focus for the episode's content, i.e. the place the episode is about.

This is not meant to describe the physical location of podcast hosts or guests.

This is part of Podcasting 2.0 standard and is currently supported only by some platforms.

v2.0Lightning recipients

Lightning network allows to exchange bitcoin cheaper and faster. For each recipient, you will need to enter

  • node (wallet) address
  • weighting (split)

This will enable listeners on certain podcatchers to send bitcoin to these addresses in ratios specified by the weightings.

If three recipients with weightings 3, 10, and 7, are specified, then they will receive 15%, 50%, and 35% of the streamed micropayments, respectively. That is because

  • 100% × 3 / (3 + 10 + 7) = 15%
  • 100% × 10 / (3 + 10 + 7) = 50%
  • 100% × 7 / (3 + 10 + 7) = 35%

It is enough to specify the recipients at the podcast level. But the recipients specified at the episode level will take precedence when listeners contribute value while listening to that episode.

Click here for more information on how to set up a podcaster wallet and embed its address in your episode.

This is part of Podcasting 2.0 standard and is currently supported only by some platforms.