The Role of RSS Feeds in Podcasting

Most people don’t think much about how podcasts get to their computers, smartphones, tablets, or smart devices. Whether you listen on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, or one of the many other podcast sites and apps, all your favorite podcasts are there in one place.

And, if you subscribe to a show, new episodes just seem to appear magically. You may even get a notification when the latest episode is available. How this happens is quite a simple process but not one that is understood by most listeners. However, it is important for podcasters to understand. Even if your hosting platform handles all the work, it is useful to know how it all happens. And, the way it happens is through RSS.

How Does RSS Work?

Many podcasters just starting out wonder how to upload their podcasts to Apple Podcasts or another podcast provider. If you think about it, that would be impractical given the growing number of places people can listen. Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and other similar services are podcast directories. They also usually have built-in players so you can listen. However, none of those podcasts actually reside on their servers. Instead, they all use RSS to fetch the podcast for you.

RSS is code (XML) that looks much like standard HTML, which is used to code websites. It is specifically formatted with all standard information that directories need to know about a show. Podcast indexes and player sites use the RSS to fetch the latest information saving you the trouble of going to each podcast’s website.

What Data is Included in RSS?

While the RSS code is usually created automatically, it is still critical for podcasters to understand what goes into it. That way you can ensure that all the essential information is included. Podcast indexes and players use this information to both properly index your podcast and display information to listeners. This is how the podcast player knows your podcast’s title, subtitle, description, language, category, author, and other information. It also provides a link to the podcast artwork using the “image” tag so the player can retrieve and display the image file.

The RSS data also includes episode specific information including episode title, duration, description, show notes, author, language, episode-specific artwork, and tags for explicit content. A critical piece of data for podcast indexing and player sites is the “guid” tag. This is the Globally Unique Identifier for each episode. This identifier is used to identify new episodes and also to ensure that episodes are not accidently listed twice.

Where is the Podcast Stored?

Podcasts, yours and others, are not stored on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, or any other index site. The sites simply aggregate the RSS feeds from all the shows they index. Podcasts live on the server of a podcast host. That can be on a specialized podcast hosting site or on a personal or business website. When a new episode is added, an RSS update is created, which is received by all the sites that index the podcast. Every time someone plays the podcast, the player uses the RSS information to fetch it from the hosting site.

So, How Can We Tell How Many People Listen?

Since the indexing sites and podcast players are simply fetching the episodes from the podcast host, how do you tell how many people are listening to a podcast? Every time someone listens to your podcast, no matter whether that is on a smartphone, on the web through a player app, or even through a smart speaker, your host receives what is called an HTTP GET request. Your host counts those requests to provide analytical data. This means that podcasters don’t have to count listens from every index site or player. All of the analytical data resides at the same place as the podcast audio itself.

How Do I Create an RSS Feed?

The good news is that you don’t usually need to create your own RSS feed. There are plenty of guides available should you want to, but most podcast hosting sites do this for you. You fill in some fields to provide all the necessary information, and the RSS code is created for you. Even if you host your podcast on your own website, there are ways to have it done automatically. There are plugins for WordPress that facilitate RSS feeds, and providers like Squarespace include RSS functionality in their packages.

Most podcasters will never have to do much about their RSS feeds. However, it is good to know what they do and how they work because without them, people would have a hard time finding, listening to, and following your content.