How to upload a podcast to Spotify, video included: steps, format and what changes in Spain

How to upload a podcast to Spotify, step by step

The first thing almost everyone asks is whether it costs money. It does not: putting a podcast on Spotify is free. What you need is a host, the place where the files live and which generates the RSS feed, the address the apps read. The most direct one is Spotify for Creators itself, which is also free.

There are only a few steps. You sign in to Spotify for Creators with your Spotify account and create a new show. It asks for the name, a description, the category, the language and the cover art, which is square and is what people see on their phone before they press play. Then you upload the first episode, give it a title and description, and choose whether it goes out right away or on a set date.

What about your phone? The Spotify for Creators app lets you manage the show and publish, but video can only be uploaded on the website: you save it as a draft on the computer and, if you like, publish it later from the phone. Spotify no longer lets you record or edit inside the app, so the episode has to arrive finished.

One detail that causes a lot of headaches is music. The feature that let you drop Spotify songs between talk segments is gone, and a commercial song inside your file needs its own licence. We explain it in what music you can use in your video.

If your podcast is already on another host

Many people start on iVoox, Acast or another host and later want to be on Spotify too. You do not need to move or upload anything again.

In Spotify for Creators you choose to add an existing show hosted somewhere else and paste your RSS feed address. Spotify sends an eight-digit code to the email listed in that feed; you type it into the form and the show is yours. From then on, every episode you upload to your host appears on Spotify without you doing anything else. Some hosts, such as Acast, Buzzsprout or Libsyn, also have their own way of sending it.

If you want to move the whole show to Spotify for Creators, you can, but take it slowly. First you import the episodes, then you ask each platform to update to the new RSS feed and, finally, Spotify cuts the connection with the old host. With iVoox it has to be done by hand like this, because it does not support the automatic redirect other hosts use.

What about a private podcast? Spotify is built for public shows. If the podcast is only for your team, it goes out through the intranet, Teams or a private link, as we explain when we talk about internal podcasts for companies.

How to upload a video podcast to Spotify and what format it needs

Spotify has supported video podcasts for a while and shows them more and more: on a phone, whoever opens the episode sees it, and if they lock the screen they keep listening.

If you host on Spotify for Creators, you upload the video like any other episode. If you host elsewhere, the audio keeps arriving through the RSS feed and the video is added separately: in Spotify for Creators you open the episode list, click the three dots next to the episode and choose to upload video. That video replaces the audio, but only inside Spotify; Apple Podcasts and the other apps still play the audio.

The format Spotify asks for is specific. An MP4 or MOV file with one video track and one audio track of the same length, H.264 or H.265 codec, 1080p resolution, 16:9 widescreen and a fixed frame rate between 24 and 60 frames per second. Audio in AAC or PCM, stereo, at 192 kbps or more. Each episode can run up to twelve hours.

The good news is that this file is practically the same one YouTube asks for. If the episode is exported properly, widescreen and in high definition, one master works for both platforms. Vertical clips for Instagram or TikTok are a different job and are edited separately.

What changes in Spain from 20 October

Until now, putting a podcast on Spotify in Spain was mostly about reach. From 20 October 2026 it can also bring in money: that day the Spotify Partner Program reaches Spain, Italy, Andorra, Malta, Poland and San Marino.

To join, the show has to be hosted on Spotify for Creators, with at least three published episodes and, in the last thirty days, a thousand listeners and two thousand hours of listening on Spotify. You also have to include at least one ad break in your episodes.

There is one part that only video podcasts earn: the share paid for what Premium users watch. An audio-only show can join through ads, but misses out on that part. We go through it in how much Spotify pays for a podcast.

This changes a decision that used to make no difference: where to host. If you plan to earn on Spotify, it makes sense to be on Spotify for Creators and to publish on video. If yours is a company podcast and what you want is clients rather than paying listeners, you can stay where you are. It is worth deciding before launch, because moving a show with a hundred episodes is slower than starting right.

Uploading is the easy part: what gets it watched

Uploading the episode takes ten minutes. What decides whether someone stays to watch happens earlier: how it opens, how it looks and how it sounds.

On Spotify, as on YouTube, the first seconds matter a lot. That is why on Aladetres, the interview podcast whose entire post-production we handle, each episode opens with a 30 to 45 second intro with motion graphics and original music, the same visual family every time. With more than a hundred episodes post-produced, the channel has gone from around 100,000 to more than 800,000 subscribers on YouTube.

The second thing is consistency. A podcast that comes out on the same day every week grows more than one that comes out when it can. In La Fábrica, our monthly service, we close each episode with its cuts, reels and thumbnails two or three weeks before it goes out, so uploading it is the only thing left for you, and if you prefer, we handle distribution too. We work the same way on The Sage Steele Show, which we post-produce every week with our partner Dull Light from two or three hours of raw footage per episode.

If you want your podcast to reach Spotify at that level, at Bostak Films we do it from Barcelona and remotely for the whole of Europe. Book a free diagnosis: we look at your show and tell you what we would change. Everything we do is on our podcast production page.

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