Connect your podcast RSS feed to YouTube once through Subwave and every new episode appears on your channel automatically, with no manual uploads.
Publishing a podcast to every platform individually, every single time, is a grind that burns most creators out before they ever hit their stride. You forget a platform, upload the wrong file, or just lose the will to repeat the same five-step process over and over. There's a better way, and it starts with one concept: the RSS feed.
Your RSS feed is a unique link that your podcast hosting platform generates for you. Think of it as a direct line between your show and every platform you want to be on. Every time you publish a new episode, the feed updates automatically, and any platform connected to it syncs the new episode instantly. You create once, it appears everywhere.
You upload once and everything takes care of itself.
Before you can connect anything to YouTube, you need a podcast hosting platform. Subwave is free and handles exactly this: it stores your episodes and distributes them to every platform automatically. Without it, you're stuck logging into YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Amazon Music separately for every single release.
Upload once to Subwave and every platform updates on its own.
The process comes down to four steps.
Step 1: Get your RSS feed from Subwave. Open Subwave, go to your channel settings, and copy your RSS feed URL. That's the link you'll need.
Step 2: Create a new podcast on YouTube. Open YouTube, tap Create, then select New Podcast. YouTube will ask how you want to set up the show. Choose "Submit RSS feed" and paste in the link you just copied from Subwave.
Step 3: Verify your email. YouTube sends a verification code to the email address on your account. Grab that code and enter it back on YouTube. This step just confirms you own the podcast you're connecting.
Step 4: Wait for it to process. Once you verify, your feed is connected. If you're just starting out, everything populates quickly. If you already have a back catalog, it may take a bit longer. Just let it run.
"Depending on how many episodes you already have, it can take some time for everything to show up on your YouTube channel."
Most podcast platforms, including YouTube, display your episode as audio only, even if you recorded video. With Subwave you can upload both audio and video episodes, but if you upload a video episode through the RSS feed, YouTube will generate a thumbnail from your video and show it as a static image rather than playing the full video.
If you want the full video to actually play on YouTube, the best move is to upload it directly to YouTube as well. For audio distribution, though, connecting your RSS feed is the most efficient way to get your podcast everywhere at once.
From this point on, you never have to manually upload anything to YouTube again. Every time you publish a new episode on Subwave, your RSS feed updates and YouTube automatically pulls it in. It appears on your channel on its own.
You focus on creating, the platform handles the rest.
That's the whole setup. Your podcast is now connected to YouTube, and every episode you publish going forward appears there automatically. If you want to do the same for Spotify or Apple Podcasts, the process follows the same logic — get your RSS feed from Subwave, submit it to the platform, verify ownership, and you're done.