RSS Feed (Really Simple Syndication)

RSS is the decentralised backbone of podcasting. Every podcast publishes a single RSS feed — a standardised XML document listing episodes, metadata, and audio URLs — and every podcast player (Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, Pocket Casts, Google Podcasts, every third-party app) subscribes to that feed to stay current. Publish once, distribute everywhere, own the audience relationship directly.

RSS is why podcasting remains an open, non-walled-garden ecosystem despite repeated attempts by large platforms to lock content inside proprietary systems. As long as publishers control their own RSS feeds and listeners can subscribe from any app, no single platform can hold the industry hostage. For publishers, this is strategically critical: move platforms, keep your audience. For advertisers, it means programmatic audio requires insertion technology that works across the open RSS ecosystem, not a single platform's API.