How to Submit your Podcast to YouTube Music

This help doc walks through submitting your podcast to YouTube Music so that listeners can find your show in the YouTube Music app and website. This is for public podcasts. There are no steps required for private podcasts; listeners subscribe in their own YouTube Music apps rather than you the creator doing anything in the public YouTube directory.

Here is an example of how a public podcast appears on YouTube Music: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL0BgGiqBAQNW71cRakrHrkLjKYhOcrhTr

This is a similar process to distributing your podcast to Spotify, Apple, and the old Google Podcasts platform. Generally, you'll paste your RSS feed URL in the YouTube Studio and YouTube will automatically grab episodes as they are published moving forward. You do not need to update YouTube with each episode. It will happen automatically after following these steps.

When your podcast is in YouTube Music, the episodes appear as a playlist with a static image of your podcast artwork. They can be listened to in the YouTube Music app or in the web version.

Access your public podcast RSS Feed

In Hello Audio, visit your public feed and click "Feed Details" on the right, then "Copy RSS Link".

Access your YouTube Studio

Visit YouTube Studio and log in with your YouTube account associated with your podcast. Create a new account if you don't have one already. You should have a separate channel for your brand, rather than use your personal Google/Gmail account.

Note that if you create a channel within your personal Google account, the channel will appear as a login option alongside your personal account when accessing YouTube on devices like Roku/Smart TVs or tablets. For this reason, it's recommended to have a completely separate Google account for different channels rather than sub-channels within the same Google account.

The studio is found at https://studio.youtube.com/. To add the podcast, click "Create" at the top-right then "New podcast".

Choose "Submit RSS feed".

If you click "Create a new podcast", you will be prompted to make a playlist from currently published videos on your channel. It won't grab future episodes as you publish them automatically.

Complete YouTube's Verification Steps

You may be asked to verify your identity through a short video of yourself, or photo of an ID like a passport. Complete the steps requested and you'll be verified. They'll email a link for you to open on your phone to take the (admittedly awkward) video or photo.

Once submitted you'll see a notification that the verification is in review. Wait for the review to be finalized before proceeding.

When approved, you'll be notified via email that you can use "advanced YouTube features" and begin uploading your podcast. It took about 4 hours to receive the email in our testing.

Return to YouTube Studio and click "Create" at the top-right, then "New podcast" as shown above. Click "Submit RSS feed", scroll to the bottom, check the box, and accept their terms of podcast ingestion.

Submitting your RSS feed to YouTube Music

Paste the RSS feed you copied above from Hello Audio. As a reminder, you can copy it from Hello Audio by clicking "Feed Details" at the right, then "Copy RSS Link" inside your public feed in Hello Audio.

They'll send a verification code to the email address found as the owner of the feed. This email address is set in your Hello Audio account at https://app.helloaudio.fm/account.

If, like me, your YouTube Studio tab was left open while waiting for the verification confirmation, you may need to refresh the Studio page and try having the email sent again.

Select "Upload all episodes in the RSS feed" unless you'd like to only go back to a certain date, and click "Next". Note that it may take several days to upload all episodes since accounts have a daily upload limit.

They'll indicate that the podcast is treated as a private playlist until you publish it manually.

Publish your podcast feed

When all content is uploaded and processed, you can publish the feed at https://studio.youtube.com/channel/content/podcasts, or click "Content" on the left side of YouTube Studio, then "Podcasts" along the top.

You'll receive an email titled "Your podcast is ready to be published!" It will link to the Studio page where you'll find a "Publish" button. Confirm that you'd like to publish the podcast.

Linking to your podcast on YouTube Music

To share a link to your podcast on YouTube Music, hover over the feed, click the three vertical dots, and click "Get sharable link". That's a direct link to your podcast playlist on YouTube. It will appear as something like this: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL0BgGiqBAQNW71cRakrHrkLjKYhOcrhTr

Ongoing management

As you continue to publish new episodes in Hello Audio, that playlist on YouTube will automatically be updated to include those episodes.

You can view episode and playlist stats from within the Studio page on YouTube.

Beyond that, there is no updating needed on YouTube. It is treated as any other public podcast directory.