Publish a Capital Copilot Podcast to Apple, Spotify, Amazon, iHeartRadio, YouTube Music, and More

Audience: Capital Copilot customers who have created a podcast on the platform and want their episodes to appear on the major podcast directories. Reading time: ~15 minutes. Setup time per platform: 5–15 minutes. Time to go live: hours (most) to a few days (Apple, iHeart).

Capital Copilot generates a fully standards-compliant RSS feed for every podcast you create. Distribution to the major listening platforms is a one-time submission per platform — you point each directory at your CC RSS feed URL, they index it, and from then on every new episode you publish on Capital Copilot appears automatically wherever you've submitted.

This guide walks you through the whole thing, in the order we recommend doing it.

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1. Before You Start

You will need:

• A podcast already created in Capital Copilot. If you haven't, go to your CC dashboard → Podcasts → New Podcast first.
• Your CC podcast RSS URL. Every podcast on Capital Copilot has one. Its format is:

  https://api.capitalcopilot.io/podcasts/{your_podcast_name}/rss/podcast.rss
  

  Example (Capital Copilot's own podcast):

  https://api.capitalcopilot.io/podcasts/chain_reaction/rss/podcast.rss
  

  You can find your exact URL on the podcast's settings page in the CC dashboard.
• Cover artwork meeting the major-directory minimums: square, 3000 × 3000 px, JPG or PNG, RGB, under 500 KB. Apple Podcasts will reject anything smaller than 1400 × 1400. CC's image pipeline produces compliant artwork by default — if you uploaded a custom image, double-check its dimensions.
• An email address you control. Apple, Amazon, and iHeartRadio all email a verification link before they'll ingest your feed.

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2. Validate Your Feed First (5 minutes — do this once)

Before submitting anywhere, run your RSS URL through a couple of validators. If anything is wrong with your feed, every platform will reject it for the same reason — fix it once and move on.

Paste your CC RSS URL into each of these:

What "good" looks like:

• W3C: "This is a valid RSS feed" (warnings are usually OK; errors are not).
• Cast Feed Validator: green checks across iTunes / Google / generic-podcast columns.
• Podba.se: renders your episodes with cover art, title, and play buttons that actually work.

If anything fails: open a support ticket on Capital Copilot with the validator output, and we'll fix the feed. Don't submit a broken feed to Apple — failed submissions extend your review time by days.

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3. The Distribution Map

Here's the full landscape. You don't have to submit to every platform — start with the four high-leverage ones (Apple, Spotify, Amazon, YouTube Music) and add the rest if your audience asks.

Recommended sequence: Apple → Spotify → Amazon → YouTube Music → iHeartRadio → everything else. Apple first because so many downstream platforms (Overcast, Pocket Casts, Podchaser) ingest from Apple — getting into Apple usually gets you 4–5 other platforms for free over the following week.

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4. Apple Podcasts

Where: https://podcasters.apple.com — Apple Podcasts Connect. Apple ID requirement: any free Apple ID with two-factor auth enabled.

Steps

1. Sign in at https://podcasters.apple.com with your Apple ID.
2. Click My Podcasts → "+" → New Show.
3. Choose Add a show with an RSS feed.
4. Paste your CC RSS URL (from §1).
5. Apple validates the feed in-place. If it errors out, go back to §2 (Validate).
6. Confirm the auto-detected show name, author, category, language, and explicit-content flag. Edit any field that's wrong — fixes here are stored on Apple's side, not CC's.
7. Click Submit.
8. Apple emails you when the show is approved (typically 1–5 days).

After approval

• Your show URL lives at https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/<slug>/id<show_id>.
• Your Apple Podcasts Show ID is the numeric id<…> at the end of that URL. Save it — Pocket Casts, Podchaser, and several other ingesters will ask for it. (CC's own show: 1790514808.)
• Manage the show afterward at https://podcastsconnect.apple.com.

Common rejection reasons

• Artwork below 1400 × 1400.
• Show description with a placeholder URL.
• Explicit-content flag missing on a show with explicit language.

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5. Spotify

Where: https://podcasters.spotify.com — Spotify for Podcasters (formerly Anchor). Spotify account requirement: free Spotify account.

Steps

1. Sign in at https://podcasters.spotify.com.
2. Click Add your podcast → "I already have a podcast".
3. Paste your CC RSS URL.
4. Spotify sends a verification email to the address in your feed's <itunes:owner> block — click the link.
5. Confirm category, country, and language.
6. Click Submit.
7. Approval is usually under 24 hours, often within minutes.

After approval

• Your show URL lives at https://open.spotify.com/show/<show_id>.
• Manage from https://creators.spotify.com/dash/podcast/<show_id>/home.

Notes

• Spotify pulls new episodes from your RSS feed on a schedule (typically a few minutes after you publish in CC). No further action per episode.

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6. Amazon Music (and Audible)

Where: https://podcasters.amazon.com. Amazon account requirement: any Amazon account.

Steps

1. Sign in at https://podcasters.amazon.com.
2. Click Add Your Podcast.
3. Paste your CC RSS URL.
4. Amazon sends a verification email to the address in your feed's <itunes:owner> block — click the link.
5. Confirm metadata. Pick the territories you want distribution in (default: worldwide).
6. Click Submit.

After approval

• Your show appears in both Amazon Music and (typically) Audible — Audible distribution is automatic from Amazon's side; no separate submission needed.
• Manage from https://music.amazon.com/podcasts.

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7. YouTube Music

Where: https://studio.youtube.com — your YouTube channel. Channel requirement: you need a YouTube channel; you can create one in YouTube Studio if you don't have one.

Steps

1. Open YouTube Studio at https://studio.youtube.com.
2. Left sidebar → Content → Podcasts tab.
3. Click New podcast → "Use existing RSS feed".
4. Paste your CC RSS URL.
5. YouTube imports your show metadata and queues episodes for transcoding to audio-only video.
6. Approve the import.

Notes

• YouTube renders podcasts as audio-only video in YouTube Music. They also appear in YouTube proper as a podcast playlist.
• You manage episodes per-channel from https://studio.youtube.com/channel//content/podcasts.
• Reference: Google's YouTube-Music-podcast doc — https://support.google.com/youtubemusic/answer/13525207 — specifically the "Can I deliver an RSS feed if I already have a podcast on YouTube?" anchor.

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8. iHeartRadio

Where: https://podcasters.iheart.com → "Submit Podcast".

Steps

1. Go to https://podcasters.iheart.com/#submit-podcast.
2. Fill out the submission form: show title, description, your CC RSS URL, your email.
3. Submit.
4. iHeart's catalog team manually reviews submissions. Expect 3–10 days. They will email when the show is live.

Notes

• iHeart's review is the slowest of the major platforms because it's partially manual. Submit early; don't depend on iHeart being live for a launch date.

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9. Smaller Apps That Pull from Apple Podcasts Automatically

Once you're in Apple Podcasts (§4), these apps typically pick up your show within a week with no action from you:

• Overcast
• Pocket Casts (also has direct-submit at https://www.pocketcasts.com/submit/ if you want to speed it up)
• Castro
• Podchaser (auto-ingests Apple's catalog)
• Podcast Index (auto-ingests)

If you want to confirm coverage manually, pod.link is the simplest check: https://pod.link/. (Capital Copilot's own podcast: https://pod.link/1790514808.) pod.link renders a single page with a one-click "Listen on …" button for every platform that's picked up your show. We recommend using your pod.link URL as the canonical "Listen here" link in your show notes and marketing — it future-proofs against any single platform going away.

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10. Telegram (Free, Fast, No Submission)

Telegram is the easiest distribution channel and worth setting up first if your audience is already there (crypto, intelligence/security, niche-audio communities).

Steps

1. Create a public Telegram channel for your podcast.
2. In the Capital Copilot dashboard, go to Podcast settings → Distribution → Telegram.
3. Enter your channel handle. CC will post each new episode automatically with the audio attached.

Why Telegram

• Zero cost.
• Audio plays in-app — no platform redirect.
• Channel subscribers get a push notification on every episode.
• Capital Copilot's own podcast Chain Reaction publishes daily to Telegram automatically — search for it in Telegram to see the format.

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11. After You Submit Everywhere

Once your show is live on the major platforms:

1. Build a pod.link multi-link (see §9) — it's your single "Listen here" URL for marketing.
2. Update your CC podcast settings with the canonical Apple Show ID (you'll use it in show notes and analytics).
3. Set up a publishing cadence in CC — Pulses, scheduled drops, RSS-driven topic sourcing. Each new episode you publish in CC automatically appears on every directory you've submitted to. No re-submission needed, ever.
4. Monitor for ingestion failures. If a platform stops updating, the cause is almost always something in the latest episode's metadata (missing tag, oversized file, malformed pubDate). The validators in §2 will catch it; CC support can fix the underlying generator.

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12. Troubleshooting

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13. References

Standards

• Apple Podcasts requirements: https://podcasters.apple.com/support/823-podcast-requirements
• Apple's RSS guide for podcasters: https://help.apple.com/itc/podcasts_connect/#/itcb54353390
• Podcast Standards Project (PSP-1): https://podstandards.org/get-involved/ — spec at https://github.com/Podcast-Standards-Project/PSP-1-Podcast-RSS-Specification
• Google podcast RSS format reference: https://support.google.com/podcast-publishers/answer/9889544

Validators

• W3C: https://validator.w3.org/feed/check.cgi
• Cast Feed Validator: https://www.castfeedvalidator.com/
• Podba.se: https://podba.se/

Submission portals (quick-link table)

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14. Questions / Support

If a platform rejects your feed, send the rejection text to Capital Copilot support — every rejection we've ever seen is fixable on our side without you touching the feed yourself.

For a working example, our own podcast Chain Reaction is live on every platform in this guide. Pod.link page: https://pod.link/1790514808.

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This document is the canonical CC podcast-distribution SOP. It is suitable for sharing with customers as-is and for adapting into a public blog post on perpetuator.com.