Podcasting on WordPress.com

We’ve been updating support for podcasts. Are you ready to try hosting your own?

July 26, 2018

Michael Cain

It’s no secret that we’re big fans of podcasts — their beautiful storytelling and engaging news delivery add a whole new dimension to the media landscape — and podcasters. We happily support podcast creators, from sponsoring events like Podcast Movement to supporting embeds from services like RadioPublic.

Did you know that WordPress.com allows you to host your own podcast, right from your WordPress.com website? And we’ve recently updated our podcasting tools, simplifying the process of starting or managing your podcast. Whether you’re about to hit “record” on your first podcast or have used WordPress.com for your podcast for years, we think you’ll love these updates.

Configuring Your Podcast Channel

We’ve redesigned the Podcasting Settings page to be faster and more intuitive. Visit Settings > Writing > Podcasting to set up and manage your podcast channel. Pick a podcast category, add details like your podcast’s title and cover image, and you’re ready to go.

podcast-settings.png

The new Podcasting Settings page.

Creating and Editing Podcast Episodes

The post editor also got some new indicators to make it more apparent when you’re creating or editing a podcasting episode. To publish an episode, create a new post, assign it the podcast category you designated on the Settings page, and upload or embed an audio file.

podcasting-episode

A podcast episode in the post episode.

Added Support for Google Play, Spotify, and Alexa

Behind the scenes, we’ll do the heavy lifting to support services like Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Spotify, and even Alexa Daily Briefings. Submit your feed to each service once, and then publish episodes whenever inspiration strikes! We’ll make sure every episode gets listed.

apple-podcast

My first episode on Apple Podcasts!

Podcasts can add a new dimension to any site — and they encourage visitors to subscribe and return frequently.

If you have requests for other updates to our podcasting tools, let us know in the comments! We’ll continue to refine our podcasting support. In the meantime, you might want to check out some of these great podcasts that are already hosted on WordPress.com:

  • Bundyville: “A never-before-heard chronicle of the rise, fall and resurgence of the Bundy family, the armed uprisings they inspired and the fight over the future of the American West.” – from Longreads, in partnership with Oregon Public Broadcasting.
  • You Are Not So Smart: “A show about psychology that celebrates science and self delusion.” – hosted by David McRaney.
  • You’re Wrong About…: A podcast “about historical events or famous people that the public has forgotten or misremembered” – hosted by Michael Hobbes and Sarah Marshall.
  • Hilltown Family Variety Show: A community radio show from Western Massachusetts that’s been around since 2007!

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53 Comments

Comments are closed.

  1. Laura Magee Jul 26th at 3:16 pm

    How exciting! I am still in the figuring-out-how-to-blog season of my blogging career so this is great information for me!

    Liked by 14 people

  2. Girolamo Aloe Jul 26th at 3:33 pm

    Hi. I am concretely interested in podcasting. Will this feature available also for hosted websites that use JetPack?

    Liked by 10 people

  3. John Eli Jul 26th at 3:44 pm

    This is great info. I’m not quite ready to launch a podcast yet, but I’m holding on to this for future use.

    Liked by 5 people

  4. Quarkybirdy Jul 26th at 3:59 pm

    This is awesome!!!!!!! Thanks for the tips!!!

    Liked by 6 people

  5. MELewis Jul 26th at 4:03 pm

    Agree with everyone else that this is timely and informative — thanks for the clear advice! I am also thinking of doing a podcast on a business theme which would link up with my professional website through Jetpack. I hope WordPress will consider adding it!

    Liked by 4 people

  6. turning20web Jul 26th at 4:05 pm

    Hurrah!!
    I m going to try it for sure…
    Thanks Michael for sharing!! ✨✨✨💟

    Liked by 5 people

  7. Shannon Jul 26th at 4:09 pm

    This is pretty cool! I love that WordPress has really grown to accommodate the needs of the internet people.

    Liked by 7 people

  8. Jathan Fink Jul 26th at 4:15 pm

    This is awesome! Thank you for the info. I can’t wait to try it out!

    Liked by 6 people

  9. getthehelloutofproblems Jul 26th at 4:15 pm

    Great info….will definately work on it

    Liked by 8 people

  10. WakeUpWithJamie Jul 26th at 4:22 pm

    Awesome! I did not know this. I was actually talking to someone about creating a podcast yesterday. Thanks for the info!

    Liked by 9 people

  11. doctormelbb Jul 26th at 5:16 pm

    I like this (two thumbs up!) I had no idea. Thanks Michael…

    Liked by 7 people

  12. bernadete Jul 26th at 5:19 pm

    Hi, I use free WordPress. Is the podcast just for premium WordPress?

    Liked by 4 people

    • Michael Cain Jul 27th at 8:13 pm

      Hi there!

      Podcasting is free for all WordPress.com accounts, however to upload audio or video files to your account, you would need any of our paid plans. If your site is on the Free plan, you will need to host your audio files elsewhere and embed them into your podcast episodes.

      Liked by 2 people

  13. Samayeta Kanjilal Jul 26th at 6:13 pm

    This is an amazing job!! Thanks a lot

    Liked by 3 people

  14. Byron TGI Friday Jul 26th at 6:45 pm

    Great info. I just tried to embed a Libsyn audio player – the Post does not recognize the audio player

    Liked by 5 people

  15. dehggial Jul 26th at 6:53 pm

    Good idea! I’d rather pay WP to host a podcast than some other site.

    Uploading these files is only available as part of the WordPress.com Personal, Premium, or Business plan. If your site is on the Free plan, you will need to host your audio files elsewhere and embed them into your podcast episodes.

    What is the monthly bandwidth one gets with each of the plans?

    Liked by 3 people

  16. holistickei Jul 26th at 8:35 pm

    This is amazing. Thank you.

    Liked by 3 people

  17. Robert Pavlis Jul 26th at 9:18 pm

    Where is the podcast stored? It was my understanding that storing them inside wordpress will slow down your website.

    Liked by 3 people

    • Michael Cain Jul 27th at 9:16 pm

      Hi there!

      If you have any of our paid plans, the audio and video files are stored on our own content delivery network (CDN) that’s been optimized to automatically serve media files as quickly as possible all around the world.

      While pages with lots of media (such as images) might load a little more slowly, podcast episodes will only load when the user clicks the “Play” button on the audio player.

      I hope that helps!

      Liked by 4 people

  18. XtraMileFitnesskf Jul 26th at 9:37 pm

    Sounds like a very good idea, still getting to grips with blogging but could add this to it 👍

    Liked by 3 people

  19. Renee Jul 26th at 10:44 pm

    So cool, inspiring, and accessible! Thank you!

    Liked by 4 people

  20. Amplify Jul 27th at 2:45 am

    This is awesome! I’ve been considering a podcast and it’s nice to know that this platform is available right here! Thanks

    Liked by 4 people

  21. spedadvisor Jul 27th at 4:03 am

    Thanks for sharing this info!

    Liked by 3 people

  22. promahesh Jul 27th at 5:02 am

    This is amazing by WordPress . They have made it so easy to create podcasts.

    Liked by 2 people

  23. Kenzy Kundrat Jul 27th at 6:06 am

    This is awesome thank you!

    Liked by 3 people

  24. Margaret Jul 27th at 6:42 am

    This is really helpful information. I have only made one episode of my podcast and I uploaded onto a local podcast hosting platform but was very disappointed when I found that they didn’t support WordPress.com sites so I couldn’t really use by blog to share my work. Now that I know there are these built-in options I feel much more inclined to get cracking. Thank you.

    Liked by 4 people

  25. Biblicon Jul 27th at 7:38 am

    Could you not first explain what is podcasting? We might be interested if we knew what it is.

    Liked by 4 people

  26. Torres 126 Jul 27th at 8:57 am

    That’s awesome, but is this limited to a specific plan?

    Liked by 3 people

    • Michael Cain Jul 27th at 9:04 pm

      Hi there!

      Podcasting is free for all WordPress.com accounts, however to upload audio or video files directly to your account, you would need any of our paid plans. If your site is on the Free plan, you will need to host your audio files elsewhere and embed them into your podcast episodes.

      Liked by 2 people

  27. VanessaHarrisInspires Jul 27th at 1:00 pm

    This is great news! What service will be need for people to listen to the podcast episodes on our WordPress sites?

    Liked by 2 people

    • Michael Cain Jul 27th at 8:47 pm

      Hi there!

      You can submit your podcast to any number of Podcast services (e.g. Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Spotify, etc.) to let people search for and listen to it. You can also give your podcast feed URL directly to users so that they can add it to whichever Podcast app they prefer. There’s more information about your Feed URL and how to submit to some services on the Podcasting documentation page:

      https://wordpress.com/support/audio/podcasting/

      Let us know if you have any issues!

      Liked by 4 people

  28. deepanilamani Jul 27th at 1:43 pm

    Excellent news for us bloggers. Thank you so much for all the information. Looking forward to add podcast to my blog, and so glad you have come up with it. Thank you again 🙂

    Liked by 3 people

  29. onthepages Jul 27th at 2:06 pm

    Thank you! Exactly what I planned next for my site. I was wondering how I would accomplish this. Perfect resource. I’ll be using Anchor in iOS to create and edit before posting to my blog. I’ll let you know how it goes.

    Liked by 3 people

  30. pick1solution Jul 27th at 3:30 pm

    Sorry, I have found that my face is perfect for Radio.

    Liked by 4 people

  31. collardgreensandscaviar Jul 27th at 5:58 pm

    Very super cool!

    Liked by 5 people

  32. Scott Jul 27th at 7:39 pm

    This is outstanding! I’ve been thinking of creating a podcast to go along with my new blog. I’m just getting into this blog/podcast stuff, but it’s been an interest of mine for a while!

    Liked by 3 people

  33. Aishwarya Das Jul 28th at 9:53 am

    This is cool. Currently will not try it but holding it for future use

    Liked by 3 people

  34. David J. Bauman Jul 29th at 2:44 am

    This is incredibly timely as I’ve been talking with a few friends about starting a monthly poetry podcast. Thanks!

    Liked by 5 people

  35. wanderingwonder1 Jul 29th at 1:50 pm

    I’m new to WordPress, and i had no idea it allowed podcasting! I actually had plans to start a podcast with friends next week and we were thinking of using Skype, but might try it on here now. Thanks for this post! 🙂

    Liked by 3 people

  36. David J. Bauman Jul 29th at 4:01 pm

    Will do, thanks!

    Liked by 3 people

  37. lisamarielifecoaching Jul 29th at 4:17 pm

    Thank you for the information!

    Liked by 3 people

  38. pastorosamnsa Jul 30th at 7:33 pm

    I will try this now. Thanks Great post!

    Liked by 4 people

  39. Thiago Jul 31st at 6:54 pm

    While reading this post, I came across the suggestion for the podcasts of the site “Hilltown Families” and began to analyze the site itself. What a great discovery! A network of families that help each other and use the site as a communication platform! I think I will try to reproduce this initiative in my socio-cultural context. Thanks, WordPress!

    Liked by 4 people

  40. janetdixonrichardson Aug 1st at 5:45 pm

    Just starting #SSSC23Things Digital #OpenBadges – thanks for info may need to use it over next few years!

    Liked by 6 people

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