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How to Publish a Podcast to Google Play Music

How to Publish Your Podcast to Google Play Music

You’ve launched your podcast and are working hard to build and grow your audience.

But getting your podcast discovered by new people is probably still a big challenge for you.

You’ve probably heard all the advice about making a strong start when you launch and getting into iTunes’s ‘New and Noteworthy’ section. And maybe you had some success with that.

But that only lasts for eight weeks, and then your podcast gets lost in the ‘iTunes abyss’ as more and more podcasts get added every day.

With well over a billion podcast subscribers, iTunes is still a super-important platform for podcasters. And continuing to make your podcast more discoverable in iTunes should be a priority.

But beyond iTunes, where else should you focus on to finding new audiences for your podcast?

In 2016, Google announced that it was adding podcasts to its Google Play Music service. Since Google doesn’t disclose its user numbers, it’s unclear how large this service is, but it could be bigger than you think.

So getting your podcast in Google Play Music could be a great way to grow your audience this year.

In this post, I’m going to give you a step-by-step guide to publishing your podcast in Google Play Music.

Before we get into the details, here’s a quick summary of the steps:

  1. Check your RSS feed is ready for Google Play Music
  2. Visit the Google Play Music Podcast Portal
  3. Click the ‘Publish’ button
  4. Click the ‘Add a Podcast’ button
  5. Enter your podcast RSS feed URL
  6. Check your email and verify you own the podcast
  7. Click ‘Publish Podcast’ and submit for approval

So now that you understand the high-level steps, let’s get started:

How to Publish Your Podcast to Google Play Music

1. Check Your RSS Feed is Ready For Google Play Music

Firstly, check that your RSS feed is in the correct format for Google Play Music.

In addition to the standard RSS feed format used by most podcasting platforms and services, there are three specific tags that Google requires. Without these tags, you won’t be able to publish your podcast to Google Play Music:

  • <title>
  • <itunes:author> or <googleplay:author>
  • <itunes:email> or <googleplay:email>

Fortunately, it’s easy to set these up in your feed if you’re hosting your podcast on Libsyn or Soundcloud.

If Your Podcast is Hosted by Libsyn

Libsyn gives you the option to create a custom feed for Google Play Music.

From the Libsyn dashboard:

  1. Select ‘Destinations’ and ‘Add New’
  2. Click the ‘Add’ button next to ‘Google Play Music’
  3. Complete all the ‘Required Information’
  4. Click the ‘Save’ button

How to Publish Your Podcast to Google Play Music - Libsyn Settings

Here’s how to get the link for your new Google Play Music feed:

From the Libsyn dashboard:

  1. Select ‘Destinations’ and ‘Edit or View Existing’
  2. Look in the ‘Quick Links’ section for your feed URL
  3. Highlight the RSS feed URL and right-click to copy it

If Your Podcast is Hosted by SoundCloud

The process is a little simpler if you’re hosting your podcast on SoundCloud.

  1. Go to ‘Settings’ and ‘Content’
  2. Add an email address to the “Email Address Displayed” field
  3. Add your podcast title to the “Custom Feed Title” field
  4. Add the author (host) name to the “Custom Author Name” field
  5. Save your changes
  6. Highlight the RSS feed URL and right-click to copy it

How to Publish Your Podcast to Google Play Music - SoundCloud Settings

2. Submit Your RSS Feed to Google Play Music 

Now that you’ve got your RSS feed URL and have added the additional information required by Google, you are ready to add your podcast to Google Play Music.

  1. Go to the Google Play Music Podcast Portal
  2. Click the ‘Publish’ button and then the ‘Add a Podcast’ button
  3. Paste your RSS feed URL into the field provided
  4. Click ‘Submit RSS Feed’

How to Publish Your Podcast to Google Play Music

If your feed is valid and the required three tags (title, email, and author) have been added correctly, you should be able to move to the next step. If not, you’ll have to go back to Libsyn or Soundcloud and check your feed settings again.

3. Confirm Ownership of Your Podcast

Next, you’ll be asked to confirm that you own the podcast. Google will send an email to the address you added to your RSS feed. Just open that email and verify that you’re the owner.

How to Publish Your Podcast to Google Play Music

You may also be asked to provide a verification code included in the email you received.

How to Publish Your Podcast to Google Play Music

Click the ‘Verify Ownership’ button, and we’re almost done!

4. Publish Your Podcast to Google Play Music

Finally, click the ‘Publish Podcast’ button and your podcast will be submitted for review.

How to Publish Your Podcast to Google Play Music

Once it’s approved, your podcast will be available on Google Play Music.

Omer Khan

I'm the founder of Prestopod a software product that helps you plan, organize & publish your podcast. And I'm also the host of The SaaS Podcast

11 Comments

  1. Joe Houghton on December 9, 2017 at 9:22 pm

    This was super helpful. I just submitted my podcast called Minnesota Influence. I searched for a while to try and find out where else I should upload it to. I’ve submitted it to itunes and it seems like itunes sydicates to most other apps. Hopefully it doesn’t take long to get approved. I’m super pumped to see it on these portals

  2. Grant Park on December 11, 2017 at 12:09 am

    I’m hosting my podcast on FEEDBURNER.
    Apple and Stitcher don’t have any issues with the feed.
    Google has issues with the feed (says it can’t be crawled).
    Feedburner is owned by Google.
    Google owns a product that is made to interface with another one of it’s products yet it doesn’t.
    Round peg, square hole.

  3. Jeffrey on December 13, 2017 at 6:47 pm

    Hello, when I try to add my Soundcloud RSS to Google, I get the error “Not allowed to crawl feed.” Google suggests I change the robots’txt file which is on Soundcloud’s side and not something I can control.

    Any tips please?

    • Omer Khan on December 13, 2017 at 7:04 pm

      Jeffrey – can you post the link to your RSS feed here so I can take a look?

  4. Jeffrey on December 21, 2017 at 3:50 pm

    Yes Omer, thanks for your support. Your spam filter is making this difficult to share with you 🙂

    This is all one line for the RSS URL:

    feeds.soundcloud.com/
    users/
    soundcloud:users:363638588/
    sounds.rss

    Jeffrey

    • Omer Khan on December 21, 2017 at 5:34 pm

      Jeffrey – your feed looks fine to me. I also submitted that URL to Google (step 2 above) and that worked fine too. I obviously can’t complete steps 3 and 4 because it’s not my feed. But I couldn’t see an issue. Are you sure that you submitted the correct feed URL to Google?

  5. Jeffrey on December 22, 2017 at 5:50 pm

    Yes I’ve tried many times with that same URL, both http and https.

    Here’s a screenshot, Google Play saying it isn’t allowed to crawl the feed. Spam Protection requires me to break up this URL, apologies.

    https://
    imagebin.ca/
    v/3ladeEEXmQgi

    • Jeffrey on December 22, 2017 at 5:57 pm

      I’ve tried with a new Google Play podcast and the RSS was accepted for that new podcast. Not sure why the first failed but I think I have this working. Thanks for verifying the RSS was valid, that helped a lot!

      Now it’s in review and I expect it will be published soon enough. Thanks a ton Omer!

      Jeffrey

      • steve on February 13, 2018 at 9:02 pm

        Jeffrey – did you ever figure this out?

  6. BaldyPal on March 27, 2018 at 3:14 am

    Hi! i’m trying to post RSS feed to Google Play Music from Anchor.fm. i submitted the rss address, but it’s trying to send a verification email to an address it generated from the url, but it’s not a real email address. how would i get it to send verification email to my real address? i’m already logged into the gmail account with the address i need it to send the verification email too. thanks in advance!
    https://anchor.fm/s/2f17910/podcast/rss

  7. Hayley on April 3, 2018 at 10:45 pm

    Okay, I’ve done everything you’ve suggested and I can’t figure out what’s wrong. my podcast is http://backtoschoolwithhayleybell.podomatic.com/rss2.xml. Could you help me?

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