Enjoyer Digest

Hey everyone, I’m a software engineer, and for previous projects, I used to handle all the audio hosting, storage, and RSS feed generation manually. However, I’m launching a new niche podcast with a team of non-technical co-hosts. I want a dedicated hosting platform that streamlines the process for everyone so I don’t have to act as the sole sysadmin/support guy every time we publish. For ideological reasons, **Spotify for Podcasters (formerly Anchor) is completely off the table**. Here is what we are looking for: 1. **Generous Free Tier / Trial:** A solid starting plan with as much storage/upload capacity as possible so we can test the waters for the first few episodes without committing right away. 2. **Episode Analytics:** Clear metrics on episode download counts and time/date tracking (crucial for our niche audience). 3. **Future-Proofing for Video:** An option to upload video episodes (video podcasts) natively down the line. 4. **Seamless Distribution:** Easy integration and auto-publishing to YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts. 5. **Affordable Upgrade Path:** If/when we scale out of the free plan, a budget-friendly basic plan with high value. 6. Integarte with Riverside. # A couple of specific questions: * **RSS.com:** I’ve heard they offer an unlimited free plan with no restrictions on storage/episodes. Is this actually true without hidden catches or limitations? * **Podbean:** I’m considering them as well- how does their free tier and user interface hold up for non-tech folks? * **buzzsprout** has a free tier? What platforms would you recommend that fit these criteria? Thanks in advance!

tldr: I want free hosting. How do I pull this off without having to make people find the podcast at a new address? We host the files at blubrry. We use their wordpress plugin podpress to generate a feed (ourwebsite . com/rss) for every feed podcast host. The problem: I can currently put the absolute address for the episodes in podpress (blubrry. com/mysite/mylatestepisode.mp3). That then goes to my rss feed. Spotify for podcasters does not provide that. I also have a spotify feed and would rather not change that feed address. So can I move it without forcing people to go look for our new podcast address? I have gone round and round with more than one LLM and they don't seem to know that they are giving me different answers every time i ask. Thanks.

I’ve been podcasting for around 2.5 years so far and have hosted with Buzzsprout so far. I have been looking around at alternatives recently that might be more cost effective, including self hosting (I’m a software engineer and building something to host the files and generate the RSS feed fits well into my wheelhouse) But then I saw Spotify Creators offer free unlimited hosting, which sounds too good to be true! So I’m wondering what las the downside? Is there any reason not to take up that offer? Anyone with any experience with Spotify Creators and have any advice or opinions both ways? Would be curious to hear your thoughts Thanks!

I run a weekly interview podcast in the tech/startup space. about 2,000 downloads per episode. 18 months of iteration on my tools. here's where I landed. recording: Riverside ($15/mo). remote interviews in separate audio and video tracks. quality is noticeably better than zoom recordings because each person's audio is recorded locally and synced. editing: Descript ($24/mo). I edit the podcast like a google doc - see the transcript, highlight what I want to cut, delete it, audio cuts with it. 3-4 hours per episode down to about 45 minutes. the filler word removal is magic. one click removes every um, uh, you know from both speakers. studio sound cleans up audio recorded in my home office with no acoustic treatment. show notes and descriptions: after each episode I dictate a summary through willow voice while the conversation is still fresh, then feed that into claude to draft the episode description, show notes, and social media posts. the whole process takes about 15 minutes instead of the hour it used to take typing from scratch. hosting: Buzzsprout ($12/mo). simple, reliable, good analytics. distributes everywhere. paid plan includes a basic website. social clips: Opus Clip ($19/mo). takes the full episode video and generates short clips. not perfect but 80% there. I pick the best 3-4 and post them. replaced paying a video editor $200/episode. music: Epidemic Sound ($15/mo). royalty-free, the search is good, quality is way above free alternatives. total: \~$85/mo. what I dropped: GarageBand (functional but slow - descript is 5x faster), Anchor/Spotify for Podcasters (limited analytics), [Otter.ai](http://Otter.ai) (descript does transcription better and built-in). the tooling in 2026 is incredible compared to 2 years ago. the barrier to making a podcast is nearly zero. the barrier to making a good one is still effort and consistency. what does your podcast stack look like?

We enabled HLS video streaming through Apple Podcast Connect last week, and opted into video hosting with Captivate.fm. I published our first video episode this morning. The video episode streams OK through Apple Podcasts. Captivate doesn't distribute video to Spotify or YouTube yet (although Buzzsprout does), but they're working on it. But the video episode isn't available through my favourite podcast app, Pocket Casts. I know Pocket Casts supports mp4 filles in RSS feeds as well as HLS streaming, and some of the podcasts I follow render video episodes in Pocket Casts. But the first video for our show doesn't stream in Pocket Casts. I've raised support requests with Captivate and Pocket Casts to figure it out. Has anyone else starting HLS video streaming their video podcast yet? How's it been going so far?

Hi podcast folks, I'm planning to migrate a German-language podcast (80 episodes) away from WordPress with Podlove to a dedicated podcast host. I need to sanity-check my migration plan before I shut down WordPress. **Current setup:** - Podcast hosted on my main domain (WordPress + Podlove) - Audio files stored on a separate, self-hosted audio server - Feed URLs in Podlove point to: `main-domain.de/podlove/file/[ID]/s/feed/c/mp3/episode-slug.mp3` (which Podlove redirects internally to the separate audio server) - Podcast is on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and other major platforms **My migration plan:** 1. Import all episodes into new podcast host (e.g., Spotify for Creators or RSS.com) 2. Update all audio file URLs to point directly to the separate audio server (since the episode slugs are the same, this should be automatable) 3. Set up a 301 redirect on the old domain for the RSS feed URL 4. Test the feed redirect works in all podcast apps 5. Shut down WordPress and set up the 301 redirect on my new web hosting **Questions:** - If I update the feed URLs in the new host to point directly to the separate audio server, will podcast apps automatically pick up the updated audio URLs? Or do they cache the old Podlove URLs and I'll lose listeners? - Is the 301 redirect approach the right one, or is there a better way to migrate the feed URL? - Any gotchas I'm missing? I want to avoid breaking the feed for existing subscribers. - Should I keep the old Podlove feed URL working for a certain period after the migration, even if it's deprecated? Thanks for any insights!

So I use riverside.fm and they just recently introduced a new hosting feature where you can have your RSS feed go through them and basically upload all of your stuff directly through them. I switched over today and all of my old episodes are on YouTube just fine, but my new episode that I recorded today is not appearing anywhere well after an hour of me publishing it. Im getting frustrated so I wanted to ask if anyone can think of any solutions. It says published on Riverside's end but its not out on YouTube apple podcasts or Spotify

I have video podcast episodes that I want to publish on Apple Podcasts as video, not audio only. What is the best way to upload them? Do I need a video-capable podcast hosting platform and a special RSS feed? Which hosting services work properly with Apple Podcasts video? Any advice from someone who has done this successfully would be appreciated.

I built [ZenMic.com](http://ZenMic.com) What do you think? # From Idea to Audio Turn any text, document, link or idea into a professional multi-speaker audio. **Custom voices, full script control, and your own podcast RSS feed**. # Custom Voices Choose from 30+ voices and assign different speakers per host. NotebookLM uses fixed voices you can't control who says what. # Full Script Control Edit every line before generation. Fix facts, tweak the tone, structure the conversation exactly how you want it. # Podcast RSS Feeds Publish to Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or any podcatcher. Turn your Substack or blog into an auto-updating podcast show.

We've released about 45 episodes of our podcast and finally feel like we've found our voice and rhythm. Now we're trying to figure out how to take it from "consistent" to "growing." We're on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Podbean, and pretty much every major platform. We currently have around 600 YouTube subscribers. Our long-form content is steady, but our Shorts have slowed down recently, and overall view growth isn't where we'd like it to be. We're considering hiring a content manager to help with content distribution, SEO, titles, thumbnails, clipping, and overall growth strategy. My questions for more experienced podcasters: * How do you track downloads, listens, and growth across all platforms? * What metrics actually matter? * At our stage, what should we focus on first? * When did you decide to hire help, and what role made the biggest impact? * What mistakes do newer podcasters make when trying to grow? * If you were at 45 episodes and 600 subscribers again, what would you do differently? I feel like I'm at the stage where I don't know what I don't know. Any advice, lessons learned, tools, dashboards, or growth strategies would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance!

Recent update has changed a lot of the nav bar mechanics, but chiefly my queuing of “up next” seems to clear between app sessions which is infuriating I was using up next to store as many as 20 podcasts selectively and slide them around as I fancied the topics, whereas now I may queue an episode, and come back 5 hours later and the “up next” queue has been completely wiped Anyone else had this issue, and is there a way to go back?

**Welcome to the** r/AudioEngineering **help desk. A place where you can ask community members for help shopping for and setting up audio engineering gear.** *This thread refreshes every 7 days. You may need to repost your question again in the next help desk post if a redditor isn't around to answer. Please be patient!* This is the place to ask questions like how do I plug *ABC* into *XYZ,* etc., get tech support, and ask for software and hardware shopping help. # Shopping and purchase advice Please consider searching the subreddit first! Many questions have been asked and answered already. # Setup, troubleshooting and tech support **Have you contacted the manufacturer?** * *You should.* For product support, please first contact the manufacturer. Reddit can't do much about broken or faulty products **Before asking a question, please also check to see if your answer is in one of these:** * [Frequently Asked Questions](http://www.reddit.com/r/audioengineering/wiki/faq) * [Troubleshooting Guide](https://www.reddit.com/r/audioengineering/wiki/troubleshooting) * [Rane Note 110 : Sound System Interconnection](https://www.ranecommercial.com/kb_article.php?article=2107) * aka: *How to avoid and solve problems when plugging one thing into another thing* * [http://pin1problem.com/](http://pin1problem.com/) \- humming, buzzing & noise # Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) Subreddits * [r/Ableton](https://www.reddit.com/r/Ableton) * [r/AdobeAudition](https://www.reddit.com/r/AdobeAudition) * [r/Cakewalk](https://www.reddit.com/r/Cakewalk) * [r/DigitalPerformer](https://www.reddit.com/r/DigitalPerformer) * [r/Cubase](https://www.reddit.com/r/Cubase) * [r/FLStudio](https://www.reddit.com/r/FLStudio) * [r/Logic\_Studio](https://www.reddit.com/r/Logic_Studio) * [r/ProTools](https://www.reddit.com/r/ProTools) * [r/Reaper](https://www.reddit.com/r/Reaper) * [r/StudioOne](https://www.reddit.com/r/StudioOne) ​ ## Related Audio Subreddits This sub is focused on professional audio. Before commenting here, check if one of these other subreddits are better suited: * r/Acoustics * [r/Livesound](https://www.reddit.com/r/Livesound) * [r/podcasting](https://www.reddit.com/r/podcasting) * [r/HeadphoneAdvice](https://www.reddit.com/r/HeadphoneAdvice/) for all headphones and portable shopping advice * [r/StereoAdvice](https://www.reddit.com/r/StereoAdvice) for consumer stereo shopping advice *Consumer audio, home theater, car audio, gaming audio, etc. do not belong here and will be removed as off-topic.*

Veteran podcaster here, just looking for suggestions. I’m going to be launching a new show next year and I’ve already got the name. I’ve checked the podcast index and thankfully it hasn’t yet been taken. I was even able to purchase the domain. It’s not that complex of a name, so I’m actually surprised there aren’t already a few podcasts with the same name. I can’t help but think someone will use it sooner rather than later and I’d like to be the first. I refuse to use a name that’s already in circulation, even if it’s a very small show. With that in mind, what would be the easiest way to “reserve” it? I could record a trailer and start a new show with my hosting provider and just let it sit dormant for the next 12 months, but is there an easier way?

After few months I resubscibed paid membership on some podcast, but Pocketcasts not showing missing episodes. RSS (is still the same url) of that podcast has the missing episodes, when I check RSS in browser. How to force refresh RSS in Pocketcasts? I know about server side checking... But no option to force refresh server side RSS refresh.

RANT ALERT: I keep getting these copyright takedown notices from Spotify - it's every episode now. All of my music is Kevin MacLeod/Incompetech CC stuff, and it's properly attributed in the show notes of every episode (most likely what is actually creating the problem...). Spotify knows or should know at this point that these copyright claims are bogus - can't they just tell their AI that Kevin MacLeod/Incompetech is the actual owner of all of these copyrights? I played along and disputed these at first, but now I'm just done with Spotify - probably forever. They account for a fraction of our downloads, and I'm just... done with them.

I'm 26 episodes in on a weekly audio only narrative storytelling podcast, hosted on Spotify. I need a break. I continue to get new followers each week is the reason I haven't entertained this until now, but I'm wearing down a little. Is there a safe way to end season 1, or take a break without hurting reach and losing followers?

I've seen many people that do podcasting purely on Spotify. Does Spotify work like YouTube in terms of pushing content or does Spotify only work with other advertising of the Podcast?

Hey everyone. I'm trying to upload an old poetry recital (extracted from a YouTube video) to Spotify and make it publicly available for everyone to listen to. I know digital distributors reject it due to audio copyright, but I constantly see accounts on Spotify successfully uploading unreleased tracks, rare audios, and bootlegs, and they stay up for a long time. How do they actually bypass the system? Is there a trick with AI voice altering, pitch shifting, or uploading it as an anonymous Podcast that actually works? Thanks!

Hey All - my name is Dan and I host a weekly video game podcast called **Good Playing With You**. We’re experimenting with a rotating third mic and are looking for guest co-hosts to join us for individual episodes. The show is a 60-minute **video podcast** focused on weekly gaming news, opinions, hot takes, and humor. The vibe is very conversational — friends hanging out and reacting to current gaming headlines. We’re looking for someone who: * Loves video games and follows gaming news * Is funny, opinionated, and comfortable on camera * Has interesting takes and enjoys reacting in real time * Is well-rounded across different types of games and genres Creator experience (YouTube, streaming, podcasting, etc.) is preferred but not required if you’re great on mic. **Important:** This is a video podcast, so video is required, along with a real podcast microphone (no gaming headsets or AirPods). We record **Thursday nights at 6:00 PM PST**. Full episodes publish on YouTube and Spotify, and we also share clips across TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, and more. If you have your own channel or podcast, you’re welcome to plug it on the show. If this sounds like a good fit, feel free to DM me with a bit about yourself and any links you’d like to share.

Think we will ever see AI Chapter Generation on Pocketcasts? It’s such a useful feature - but I’ve tried Spotify and I just prefer a dedicated podcast experience so always come back to PC!

I searched for an episode within a podcast I've subscribed to. It used to work, but recently it seems to just hang. Sometimes it does nothing other then show the spinning loading animation; sometimes it says nothing found (even though I am able to manually find the episode in the feed.) I also have a different, but possibly related, problem when subscribing to a new podcast. When I go into the podcast the episode page is simply blank. It does finally populate minutes or hours later, but it means I can't add any episodes to the queue at the point of subscribing. My guess is it's overloaded servers; it seems Pocketcasts does a lot server-side. Is anyone else experiencing this?