RSS.com changelog rss.com

Service Update

🎬 HLS Video Podcasting, Now With Money Attached

It is official. RSS.com Video Podcasting is out of early access, and it pays.

Publish a video episode and it plays in full video on Apple Podcasts, where listeners can switch seamlessly between audio and video. Ads run automatically on your video episodes from the very first one you publish, and you keep 70% of the revenue. Activate PAID (it takes a few minutes: accept the terms, add your PayPal) and you start receiving your share from that point forward. No download threshold. No follower threshold. No waiting.

Upgrade to our new Max plan for unlimited video and audio podcasts. Available now.

When you publish a video episode, the same upload goes to YouTube, with no second file to send. The video also travels in your RSS feed as an alternate enclosure, so it plays in Podcasting 2.0 apps that support it, like Pocket Casts, TrueFans, and Podcast Guru, and on your podcast web pages. Your video ads travel with it, so you can earn ad revenue when your video is watched on supported Podcasting 2.0 apps too. Everywhere else, the episode continues to play as audio exactly as it does today.

The same week that we launched video with ads, YouTube announced that it is roughly doubling the requirements for its Partner Program: new applicants will need 8,000 qualified watch hours in the past year, or 20 million qualified Shorts views in the past 90 days. Until creators qualify, ads can still appear on their videos, but they do not receive a share of that revenue. So RSS.com's HLS video offering is a new revenue channel for podcasters who want video, and an open door for YouTube creators whose format already works as a podcast, with no entry threshold to start earning.

New Feature

🏠 My Podcast, Your New Home Base

The My Podcast tab has been rebuilt as the place you land to check in on your show. It shows how far along you are, what to do next, where your monetization stands, and the resources worth reading. It is also where new notifications and nudges will appear from here on.

Episodes moved to their own tab, so managing episodes and checking on your show are now two separate jobs.

Improvement

🧭 Guided Setup for Your First Show

A step-by-step path from signup to your first listeners, built right into the My Podcast tab. Five steps: create your account, create your show, publish your first episode, distribute to the directories, and share it with your first listeners.

Steps tick off as you go, so you always know what comes next. New accounts see it on their first show, and it steps aside once you finish or once you are on a plan.

Service Update

🎬 Video Podcasting (Early Access)

Spoiler alert! Native video podcasting is officially here, in early access.

Upload a video episode and your show plays in full video on Apple Podcasts (via Apple's new HLS delivery) and in supporting Podcasting 2.0 apps (via alternate enclosure), while your audio feed keeps working everywhere else, exactly as it does today.

Want to see it in action? Greg Wasserman, our Head of Relationships, already publishes his own podcast in video. Video episodes are also displayed on your podcast web pages.

We will release a new plan supporting video soon. In the meantime we are onboarding shows gradually, so spots are limited: want in early? Join the early access waitlist and we will be in touch.

Improvement

⚡️ Faster Public Pages

Our engineers rebuilt all public-facing pages from scratch (podcast websites, episode pages, and players). The typical work nobody sees but everybody feels: same look, much faster load times, and a foundation that lets us ship improvements more quickly.

Improvement

📐 Simpler Cover Art Upload

Some podcasters, especially those just starting out, can struggle to prepare a perfect cover art that fits the technical requirements of Apple and other podcast directories, so it sometimes happens that a cover art looks square but is not perfectly square. We improved our cover art upload to automatically crop it to a perfect square and resize it to look sharp everywhere your podcast appears.

Improvement

💰 PAID Earnings in Payout Emails

For our podcasters who use PAID, our programmatic ads solution, and wait every month to see how much they made, we have now added the total amount you earned to the monthly payout notification we send out via email, so you can keep an eye on your earnings without even opening the dashboard.

New Feature

🔭 All-Time Analytics

You can now select "All time" as your analytics date range. We have removed all data-retention limits, so you can see and export your full podcast history from day one onwards. Yes, even the data from back when you had three listeners and they were all family 😉

New Feature

📝 Automatic Transcripts

You can now head to Settings → Automatic AI Transcripts in your Dashboard and activate auto-generated transcripts for every new episode. You can also auto-approve and add them to your RSS feed automatically to speed up your workflow.

New Feature

🔢 Episode Number Tip

A much-requested feature. It often happens, especially with seasoned podcasters who have many episodes published, that you are uploading a new episode and can't immediately remember which number to use. When creating a new episode, we now show the last published episode number as a reference. No more "wait, was that 73 or 74?" moments.

Improvement

🧹 Transcript Formats: VTT Only

The Podcasting 2.0 specification is deprecating SRT and TXT formats for podcast transcripts, so we did the same. VTT is meaningfully better than SRT for podcasts: support for real-time sync, interactive rendering, cue settings, non-displayed metadata, and more. Going forward, we only auto-generate and accept manual uploads in VTT. Old transcripts you previously uploaded in TXT or generated in SRT will remain in place; the change only applies to new ones.

New Feature

💎 Ad-Free Episodes for Apple Podcasts Subscribers

If you are using PAID to monetize your show with programmatic ads, you now have another way to generate revenue: deliver ad-free episodes exclusively to your Apple Podcasts subscribers, all managed directly from your RSS.com Dashboard under Monetization → Apple Podcasts Subscriptions.

Apple Podcasts is installed on over 2 billion active Apple devices. Subscribing takes one tap, payment is handled entirely by Apple, and the premium experience starts immediately with no friction. You publish one episode on RSS.com, PAID inserts ads for your public listeners, and Apple subscribers automatically get the ad-free version. You earn from both audiences at the same time, with no extra work.

One episode. Two revenue streams.

New Feature

🤖 AI disclosure

AI is already part of how podcasts are made, from editing and transcription to writing episode notes, and in some cases even recording entire episodes. The question is not whether podcasters use it, but whether listeners can tell.

We added a simple checkbox at the episode level that lets you disclose AI-generated content. The disclosure appears as a label on your podcast website and is embedded in your RSS feed, making it readable by any app or directory.

With regulators and listeners increasingly demanding transparency, disclosing now keeps your podcast ahead of the curve.

Not sure when to check the box? Visit shouldidisclose.ai to help you decide.

Improvement

📱 PodLP Distribution

We have added PodLP to the Distribution section in our Dashboard and as a Listen On button on your podcast website. PodLP is a podcast listening app with 10M+ installs built specifically for feature phones, the basic, low-cost mobile devices that are still the primary way millions of people in developing regions access the internet. Your show is now discoverable and accessible to new audiences that most podcast platforms never reach.

New Feature

🔍 Episode Search in Dashboard

One of the most requested features by our podcasters with large back catalogs is finally here! Say goodbye to endless scrolling to find that one episode from three years ago. You can now search your entire episode archive instantly, right from the dashboard. Find what you need in just a few keystrokes.

New Feature

📢 Advertise Your Brand on RSS.com Podcasts

With 50M+ monthly impressions from our in-house inventory and growing, plus access to a large partner network that can scale campaigns to hundreds of millions of impressions, you can now promote your brand and services with custom, targeted podcast ad campaigns that reach a global audience.

Send us your budget and goals, and our team will propose a state-of-the-art campaign with real-time targeting by location and demographics, plus targeting by podcast category and topic. You also get IAB certified reporting.

Whether you are advertising your local restaurant, your startup, or a global brand, we have a solution for you.

Learn more here: https://rss.com/mediakit

New Feature

📼 Added Support for Alternate Enclosure

We love innovation in podcasting, especially the kind that makes our medium more open and accessible. We adopted Podcasting 2.0 features like Transcripts and Chapters early on, and later they became mainstream with support from Apple. We hope Alternate Enclosure is on a similar path. We have added support for the Alternate Enclosure under Settings → Power Ups.

This allows you to attach alternative media files to the same episode using externally hosted URLs. For instance, you can provide lightweight audio files alongside your standard MP3. Supporting apps such as PodLP, a popular podcast app for feature phones with 10M+ installs, can automatically choose the lowest bitrate audio format, improving playback on slower networks and devices with limited resources.

You can also attach other formats, including HLS video streams, as an alternative to the primary audio file. While major platforms like Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not support Alternate Enclosure yet, it is already implemented in a number of independent apps and we expect broader adoption to follow over time.

Improvement

🤖 API Updates

Since launching our public API last December, we have been steadily improving it behind the scenes. Today, we have updated several endpoints to a new version for better performance and reliability.

Also, we are seeing great momentum: more podcasters are using our API to automate their workflows, and more third-party tools are integrating with RSS.com, from Zapier to apps that enable one-click episode publishing.

Improvement

🍏 Apple Subscriptions: Short-Term Early Access Now Available

Apple Podcasts Subscriptions is a low-effort way to monetize your podcast with enormous reach: iPhone alone represents roughly one quarter of the global active smartphone base, and subscribing is native with a single tap inside the Apple Podcasts app.

Until now, Apple Early Access Episodes on RSS.com were geared toward longer windows (1 to 4 weeks). We have now added short-term Early Access options of 3 or 5 days, which are perfect for weekly shows and time-sensitive releases where a full week (or more) feels too long.

We are also working on a new subscription model. Stay tuned 🙂

Improvement

📆 Improved Analytics Date Selector

See the bigger picture. You can now select custom date ranges of up to 365 days in your Analytics dashboard, making it easier to track long-term trends, measure growth, and compare performance over time.

New Feature

⬇️ Episode Sorting Controls

Our podcasters asked for better ways to sort their episodes, especially when managing a large back catalog. You can now sort episodes in your Dashboard by newest or oldest, making it easier to get to older episodes.

New Feature

📊 Custom Date Range Selection in Analytics

Analytics now supports custom date ranges. Whether you want to review last week or skip Mondays entirely and only look at Tuesday to Friday, you can pick exact dates and generate the report you need.

Improvement

🍿 Do Even More With YouTube

We improved our audio-to-video YouTube publishing feature in the Distribution tab, both for performance and user experience. It is now simpler to connect your channel and sync your playlist.

Improvement

🗑️ You Can (Finally) Delete Episode Art

You can now delete episode art. Previously, you could upload new episode art and replace the existing one, but you could not remove it entirely, which made “no episode art at all” a surprisingly hard request. Welcome to the long overdue Delete button.

New Feature

🤖 RSS.com public API: Now Live

Our API has officially landed. If you are not familiar with what an API does: it means you can now create podcasts and manage episodes from third-party tools, automations, or your own code, without having to use the RSS.com web dashboard.

This opens a new era of workflows, automations, and integrations with the apps you already use.

For the techies among us, but also for vibe coders who like experimenting with AI, you can now build all sorts of automations, like publishing a new episode of your show:

🚪 when your doorbell rings and nobody is home

📦 when your package is marked "delivered" but you cannot find it anywhere

🌙 when your smart lights switch to "it is definitely too late" mode

🧺 when your washing machine finishes and you ignore it for three hours

⌚️ when your smartwatch says "time to stand" and you absolutely do not

🛫 when your phone pops up a boarding pass notification and it is officially holiday mode

Yes, all of this is technically possible starting today!

Seriously though: with the RSS.com API you can automate workflows, manage episodes, speed up publishing pipelines, and build custom tooling around your show or network, all powered by secure, first-party API access.

Available to podcasters on our Podcast Networks plan: open the Account menu in the top-right of your dashboard, then select API Access to generate your API keys.

Docs: https://api.rss.com/v4/docs

Also, you can create multiple API keys to keep things clean and secure across different services, apps, and automations.

This is just the beginning. More integrations and workflow goodies are coming soon 🚀

Improvement

Smarter auto mid-roll ads (and another great reason to use chapters)

For users on PAID, our programmatic ads solution with the lowest entry threshold out there, auto mid-roll ads just got smarter.

They are now chapter-aware, which means we can place mid-rolls more intelligently using your chapter markers whenever the placement conditions are met.

Technically speaking: we upgraded the mid-roll placement algorithm to make better timing decisions when chapters are present.

Practically speaking: this is yet another reason to add chapters to your episodes. You get better-timed mid-rolls that fit the flow of the episode, and the chapters you create in RSS.com now show up across most listener apps and directories globally. Spoiler alert: Apple Podcasts support for chapters is coming this month!

Improvement

🔭 Longer Lookback for Analytics

If you are on a Podcast Networks plan, your analytics just got a big upgrade. You can now view up to a full year of data. This makes it easier to spot trends, compare episodes over time, and do deeper performance reviews for all your shows.

Improvement

🧭 New Navigation

If you manage podcasts from your phone, this one is for you. We redesigned the main navigation so the podcast switcher now lives alongside your account actions in the top bar.

The result: more usable screen space, fewer taps, and a cleaner experience on mobile and every other device size too.

Improvement

🎥 Faster YouTube Publishing and a New "Listen On YouTube" Button

We rebuilt our Audio-to-YouTube service from the ground up, and the results are clear. Converting your audio episodes into videos is now up to 4× faster than before, so your episodes reach YouTube in record time.

We also refreshed the public podcast and episode pages. If your show is published on YouTube through our Audio-to-YouTube Conversion feature, you will now see a new Listen on YouTube button directly in the Listen On section of your podcast website.

New Feature

📍 Location Tag: Put Your Podcast on the Map (Literally)

Over a year ago, we added support for the Podcasting 2.0 Location Tag. Since then, the standard has evolved with a major update, and so did we. You can now specify what place your podcast or episode is about, and where it was made.

The new version integrates beautifully with OpenStreetMap, the open, community-driven project that powers maps around the world. It's a perfect match for podcasting: both are open, collaborative, and built by passionate people who love sharing knowledge. We now store not only the GPS coordinates but also the official OpenStreetMap ID.

The location instantly appears on the podcast website we host for you, and our embedded player has also been updated to display it so your listeners can see exactly where your stories come from and what place they are about.

And here's the exciting part: imagine what comes next when many of us start using this tag… Podcast apps and directories will soon let you explore shows recorded near you, episodes about hidden local gems in the places you're visiting, stories about landmarks in the spots you plan to explore, or even true crime series set in your new neighborhood 🕵️‍♂️

The map of podcasting just got a lot more interesting 🗺️

It's an easy win: go ahead and 📍 tag your show and episodes with a location!

New Feature

🛠️ New Find My Feed Tool

Ever noticed how the simplest things—like finding a podcast's RSS feed—can sometimes be trickier than they should be? With our new Find My Feed tool, you can just enter a podcast’s title and get its RSS feed URL.

We also gathered all our free tools (available to everyone, whether you host with RSS.com or not) into one easy place.

Improvement

📣 New Distribution Destination: Curiocaster

Building on our automatic submission engine, including Apple Podcasts and all major directories and listening apps, we have now added Curiocaster, giving you yet another way to share your podcast with the world.

Improvement

A few more improvements worth mentioning:

• 💸 Refinements to PAID: We gave PAID, our programmatic ads solution, a solid boost under the hood. From verification to payouts, the entire engine now runs more efficiently, sending 💰💰💰 every month to our podcasters around the world.
• 🖼️ High-Resolution Cover Art: Podcast and episode cover art now looks extra sharp on public pages and inside the dashboard—fully optimized for those fancy high-resolution devices some of you clearly splurged on 😎.
• 💳 Coupons Made Clear: For those of us who can't resist hunting for a coupon code before hitting "Buy", upgrading is now clearer: the full discount amount shows upfront, so you always know exactly what you're paying (and saving).
• 🌐 New Language Support: We added Tamil as a new language option for podcast RSS feeds. Vanakkam to all our Tamil-speaking creators and listeners 🎙️.

New Feature

🛍️ More Monetization Opportunities for Everyone

Pick sponsors. Get paid. No matter your audience size.

We have teamed up with CodeADX so podcasters can connect with brands and share exclusive offers using custom promo codes.

• Mention your unique promo code in your episodes.
• Add it to your show notes for cross-promotion.
• Earn up to 20% commission every time a listener uses your code.

👉 Head to the Monetization Tab in your RSS.com Dashboard → CodeADX to get started. No minimum downloads needed.

We are always looking for new ways to help you earn from your podcast, and this is another exciting addition to the mix. Alongside our recently launched 1-click “set it and forget it” programmatic ads solution PAID, Apple Podcasts Subscriptions, the Funding button, and Value 4 Value, you now have even more ways to make money.

Improvement

Update your PayPal Address

You can now update the PayPal address used for PAID payouts directly from your RSS.com dashboard. No support tickets, no hassle. Just update it yourself and keep the earnings flowing. 💸

Improvement

Better PAID Experience: Embed Player & Category Controls

The embed player now works even more smoothly with podcasts using PAID monetization, automatically adjusting episode length to account for ad slots for a seamless listener experience.

We have also refined how you manage IAB category exclusions in PAID. Excluding categories is simpler, and you can restore the default setup with just one click.

Improvement

☕️ Brewing Analytics Faster Than Ever

Not every improvement is something you can see, but some you can definitely feel. We have supercharged the way we brew your podcast analytics.

Before: it was like waiting on a slow drip coffee. Now: it is like pressing a button and getting a perfect espresso shot. ⚡️

What is happening under the hood really matters: your analytics are now faster, stronger, and roasted to perfection by our engineering team. 🚀

Fix

🌙 Dark Mode… but Not Too Dark!

We recently rolled out Dark Mode for the Dashboard to keep your eyes happy during those late-night publishing sessions. A few elements turned out a little too dark, though, making content hard to see. We adjusted the contrast so it stays dark, but you will not need night-vision goggles to read it. 😎