The Best Way to Distribute Video Podcasts
Video podcast hosting and distribution are surprisingly complex. You’ll want to start with YouTube but if you’re calling it a “podcast” it should be available “Wherever you get your podcasts”, including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and every other podcast app.
Our favourite way to achieve video podcast ubiquity is also the simplest and most affordable solution we’ve come across.
Here’s how it works and how it compares to the competition:
Video Podcast Hosting: Our Way
“Our Way” Illustrated.
Our way involves using two free video podcast hosting providers, Spotify for Podcasters and YouTube. This gets your show onto the two biggest video podcast consumption platforms while minimizing cost and maximizing simplicity.
Spotify for Podcasters makes your video accessible by Spotify users but also connects to every other podcast app via RSS. Uploading to YouTube gets your podcast indexed in the world’s second biggest search engine while also sending it to YouTube Music (the Google-owned replacement for now-defunct Google Podcasts).
Downsides to Our Way:
You need to upload every episode twice.
Your audience stats/analytics are split between two places.
Free hosting may mean more ads on/near your content.
Apple, Amazon, and every other podcast app get an audio-only version of your show.
The Competition: A Better Way?
Could using a paid podcast hosting service smooth over some of the downside above? Unfortunately not.
Podcast hosting companies Libsyn, Podbean, and Castos will send video to Apple Podcasts, while “our way” sends audio-only to that app. Plus these hosts automatically push video podcasts to YouTube, saving a step.
Great, right? Well, no.
You have to add in a step too, since every video podcast should be on Spotify. And that’s not the only downside to doing it this way:
Downsides to “The Competition”:
Libsyn, Podbean, and Castos cost $40-$100 USD per month..
You still upload every episode twice (to your host, and SfP).
Your audience stats/analytics are now split among three places (your host, YouTube, and Spotify).
Your show will still be audio-only on Amazon Music, iHeartRadio and a few other platforms - because they don’t support video anyway.
Conclusion: Stick with “Our Way”
The advantage of getting video into Apple Podcasts doesn’t seem worth the added cost and inconvenience. Apple doesn’t promote video podcasts and most users don’t even know video is an option in the app. People looking for video podcasts tend to go to one of two places: YouTube or Spotify. Sure, “our way” isn’t without its own downsides, but we think it’s the best way to do it - at least for now.