Podcasts are distributed to listeners via RSS feeds. RSS feeds contain all of the information about your podcast, including episode media and metadata, and are submitted to podcast directories, like Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Amazon Music.
Most podcasts only use one feed. We call this the Primary Feed, and this is typically the feed submitted to all podcast directories for broad distribution.
Feed Management
The Feeds page provides an overview of all feeds for your series. You can customize global settings, including the series page, episode pages, and subscriber feed.
You can also click on a feed for more details. On the Feed Details page, you can set up access control, ad settings, feed limits, and discoverability. This is also where you can deactivate a feed.
Alternate Feeds
You can set up multiple feeds for a single series. We call these Alternate Feeds. All episodes are created on the Primary Feed, but you can choose to publish your episodes to one or many feeds (more info).
Use cases for Alternate Feeds include:
- Content windowing
- Make episodes available to a specific platform or listener tier before they are available to the general public
- Exclusive content
- Create a custom feed to release subscriber-only content
- Put episodes behind a paywall while still keeping some content publicly available
- Ad-Free content
- Disable paid advertising on your premium feeds
Creating an Alternate Feed
To create one or many Alternate Feeds, click the plus button on the Feeds page and provide a unique name for your feed. If you would like your Alternate Feed to be authenticated with an access token or using JWT (see Access Control, below), please contact support@art19.com.
Alternate Feeds can be viewed and managed on the Feeds page.
Managing Alternate Feed Settings
Alternate Feeds have a few additional settings compared to the Primary Feed.
You can override the series title and description in the Feed Metadata card.
You can override the series artwork in the Feed Artwork card. Note that episode artwork for the specific feed will take precedence over the feed artwork when provided.
Finally, you can also control whether your Alternate Feed shares episodes with your Primary Feed in the Episodes Card.
If you turn this setting on, all new and existing episodes will added to the Alternate Feed. Click here for more information about managing episodes with multiple feeds.
Access Control
There are multiple ways to restrict access to feed content.
1. You can request the creation of an Alternate Feed, which you only submit to select listening platforms. This is a popular method of tailoring content or advertising for a specific channel.
2. You can request that we add an access token to an existing or new feed. Tokens are automatically generated alphanumeric strings that are appended to the end of the feed and enclosure URLs. This method offers the same level of security as a new, Alternate Feed, but it can be added to an existing feed URL and refreshed by request.
Example:
3. You can request that a feed uses JSON Web Token (JWT) authorization for an existing or new feed. This is the most advanced form of security we offer. It does require that you operate your own podcast client, or can work with a third-party podcast client to submit JWT information to ART19 when requesting content. Click here for more information on advanced feed security with JWT.
Reporting
Statistics for a single episode published on multiple feeds are aggregated on the episode statistics dashboard. Episode reporting broken out by feed is available as a custom report request or via data export.