Which Podcast Directories Index an RSS Feed? Notes From Listing Our Four Shows

I build PodThis, and PodThis makes its own podcast series. They go out as four shows: PodThis History and PodThis Wild World in English, PodThis Vilda Världen and PodThis Godnattsagor in Swedish. Between them they carry six series, which you can browse on the PodThis series page. The shows are hosted on Transistor, and every listing below points at a Transistor feed.

This post is the log of getting those four shows into the directories in September and October 2026. It covers what each directory asked for, how long it took and what went wrong.

What a podcast directory does with your RSS feed

A podcast directory does not store your audio. It stores the address of your RSS feed, reads the feed on a schedule and shows the episodes it finds there. When I ask Apple’s public lookup service about our shows, each record carries a feed address on feeds.transistor.fm. That one field is the listing.

Two things follow from that. New episodes need no new submission, because every directory re-reads the feed. And if the feed address changes without a redirect, each directory has to be told again. The second point cost us the most time; see below.

Before you submit: what the directories checked

1. At least one published episode. An empty feed has nothing to list. PodThis Wild World had no episodes until 3 October, and until then Spotify would not let me claim it.
2. An owner e-mail in the feed. Spotify’s ownership check sends a verification code to the owner address in the feed. Two of our Swedish feeds had that field empty, so the claim failed until I added the address in the Transistor show settings on 2 October.
3. Category and language. Transistor writes both into the feed from the show settings. History is filed under History and Documentary, the two nature shows under Pets & Animals and Nature, and the bedtime show under Stories for Kids and Parenting.
4. Square cover art. Our show covers are 3,000 by 3,000 pixels and under 512 KB, rendered by the same cover tool for every show.

The directories, one by one

• Apple Podcasts. Submitted from the Distribution tab in Transistor. PodThis Wild World was listed on 3 October at 08:45 Stockholm time, about 20 minutes after its first three episodes were published. Checked 6 October 2026: all four shows come back from Apple’s lookup service, each with its Transistor feed address.
• Spotify. Submitted from Transistor as well. Wild World appeared at 08:48 the same morning. Claiming a show in Spotify for Creators is a separate step: History and the two Swedish shows were claimed on 2 October, Wild World on 3 October. Checked 6 October 2026: all four show pages load on open.spotify.com.
• Amazon Music. For Wild World, Transistor’s distribution handled it, and the confirmation mail came at 09:00, 36 minutes after the first episodes. Checked 6 October 2026: all four shows in the Amazon Music app. The web listing only renders in a full browser, so this one was checked by hand.
• Deezer. Also through Transistor. The Wild World confirmation came at 09:02. Checked 6 October 2026: not confirmed. Deezer’s public search did not answer my query, so this entry rests on the confirmation mail.
• Pocket Casts. Checked 6 October 2026: a search for PodThis returns all four shows. It also returns a second, older entry for each Swedish show, which is the problem described in the next section.
• Podcast Index. The open index that many smaller podcast apps read. Submitted on 4 October. Checked 6 October 2026: not confirmed. Its website search needs a full browser and its API needs a key, so I have not seen the listing yet. The next check is on 9 October.
• YouTube. Not an RSS directory: YouTube wants video. Transistor’s YouTube auto-post turns each episode into a still-image video on the @PodThis channel. The back catalogue of 35 episodes stalled at YouTube’s daily upload limit, and all of it was up on 1 October, after the channel’s advanced features were approved. Marking each playlist as a podcast in YouTube Studio also puts the show in YouTube Music. Checked 6 October 2026: the channel’s Podcasts tab lists all four shows.
• Poddtoppen (Sweden). We never submitted anything. Its show addresses use the Apple Podcasts id, so it appears to read Apple’s directory. Checked 6 October 2026: all four shows have a page.
• Podtail (Sweden). Not submitted either. Checked 6 October 2026: it lists Vilda Världen and Godnattsagor, but from the feeds of our previous host, and the episode audio there no longer loads. I found no Podtail page for History or Wild World.

What went wrong, and what we decided against

Most of the work was waiting. These are the parts that cost time or needed a decision.

• Moving hosts leaves copies behind. In September we moved the shows to Transistor. We chose not to import or redirect the old feeds: each show started fresh and was submitted as a new podcast. Apple and Spotify took the new feeds cleanly. The catalogues that crawl on their own did not. Podtail still shows the old Swedish feeds with dead audio, and Pocket Casts has two entries for each Swedish show. If you move hosts, redirect the old feed if you can.
• One feed per show. PodThis also publishes its own feed for each series on podthis.co, with Podcasting 2.0 tags such as a stable podcast:guid, chapters and transcripts. We did not submit those feeds to Apple or Spotify. Two feeds for one show would give each directory two copies, and Podtail shows how long copies last. The directories get the Transistor feed; our own feed is for RSS readers and the site.
• No tracking prefix. Some services offer an analytics prefix on episode audio addresses that counts downloads across apps. We decided against one. Our listening numbers come from Transistor’s statistics.
• Not done yet. Castbox, Podbean, Podchaser, Listen Notes and Goodpods are on our list and not yet submitted. This post will say so when they are.

Can you list your own PodThis episodes in a directory?

Every PodThis creator profile has an RSS feed, and you can paste its address into any podcast app that follows a show by URL. A directory listing is a different matter. The profile feed names PodThis as its owner, so an ownership check such as Spotify’s would send its code to us, not to you.

If you want your episodes in Apple Podcasts or Spotify under your own name, download the audio (every plan can) and publish it through a podcast host of your own. Then work through the list above: one episode out, your own e-mail in the feed, a category, a language and a square cover.

How I checked

Every entry above was checked on 6 October 2026. I looked up Apple through its lookup service and show pages, Spotify through its show pages, Pocket Casts through its search, YouTube through the channel’s Podcasts tab, Poddtoppen and Podtail through their show pages, and Amazon Music in its app. Where I could not see a listing, the entry says so. When Podcast Index confirms, I will update the entry and the date at the top.

AI use: this post was drafted with AI assistance from our own publishing logs. I read every sentence and checked every listing before it went live. How PodThis writes and reviews: editorial policy.

To hear the shows, start on the series page. For making episodes from your own material, see how to turn a PDF into a podcast.