Overview
An RSS feed is the backbone of podcasting. Understanding what it is and what it must contain will save you hours of troubleshooting when directories reject your submission or episodes fail to appear. This guide explains the structure, the required tags, and how to check your feed is valid.
What You Need
- Your podcast host's RSS feed URL
- A text editor or browser (to view the XML)
- Our RSS Feed Validator tool
Steps
What an RSS feed actually is
An RSS feed is an XML file hosted at a permanent URL (e.g. https://feeds.buzzsprout.com/12345.rss). It's a structured list of your show's metadata and episodes. When Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or any other directory subscribes to your feed, they poll it periodically and download new episodes automatically. You never "push" to Spotify — they pull from you.
Required channel-level tags
These describe your show as a whole and must appear inside the <channel> block: <title>, <description>, <link>, <language> (e.g. en-gb), <itunes:author>, <itunes:image href="...">, <itunes:category text="...">, and <itunes:explicit> (true or false). Apple Podcasts will reject any feed missing these.
Required episode-level tags
Each <item> block represents one episode and must contain: <title>, <enclosure url="..." length="..." type="audio/mpeg"> (this is the actual audio file link), <guid> (a unique permanent identifier), <pubDate> (RFC 2822 format), and <itunes:duration>. The <guid> is immutable — never change it after publishing or directories will treat it as a new episode.
Validate your feed
Use our RSS Feed Validator: paste your raw RSS XML and it checks for all required iTunes and Spotify tags. Alternatively, open your feed URL in a browser — if you see well-formed XML, it's readable. Malformed XML (mismatched tags, unescaped ampersands) will cause silent failures across all directories.
Protect your feed URL
Your RSS feed URL is the identity of your podcast. If you ever change podcast hosts, use feed redirect (most hosts support this) — it inserts a <itunes:new-feed-location> tag pointing to the new URL. Directories honour this redirect within a few days. Never simply abandon the old URL or your subscribers will stop receiving new episodes.
Pro Tips
- Always wrap descriptions in
<![CDATA[...]]>if they contain HTML — otherwise angle brackets break the XML. - Episode GUIDs should be permanent URLs or UUIDs — many hosts generate them automatically.
- The
<itunes:type>tag (episodicorserial) affects how Apple Podcasts orders episodes in its interface.