Spotify is a place to listen, not a home base
Spotify is great at one thing: playing your show to people who already have Spotify open. It isn't built to be your show's homepage.
The page Spotify gives you is shaped like every other show page on Spotify. You don't choose what goes on it, you can't add a sign-up form or a sponsor link, and other shows get recommended right beside yours. Anyone who taps your link without the app installed gets asked to download it first. Some of them give up right there.
A website fixes all of that, and it doesn't mean leaving Spotify. You keep publishing exactly as you do today. The site is a second front door for everyone who isn't already inside the app.
Finding the right link
ShowHub needs your show link, not an episode link.
Open your show in Spotify (on your phone or computer), find the Share option in the show's menu, and copy the link to the show.
The link looks like open.spotify.com/show/ followed by a string of letters and numbers. Anything with /episode/ in it is a single episode.
If you host with Spotify for Creators, your show also has an RSS feed. You'll find it in your show settings, and it's worth using if you can, because it carries the most detail about each episode: full descriptions, artwork and release dates.
What visitors see
The home page shows your cover art and description with your episodes listed underneath, newest first.
Each episode gets its own page with its own address, built from the title and description you wrote when you published it. There's a player at the top, your notes underneath, and links to the episodes before and after it. Listeners who prefer an app can tap through to Spotify, Apple Podcasts or wherever else you're listed.
That address is the link to share. It works for everyone: people on Android or iPhone, people at a work computer that won't install apps, and search engines.
Getting found outside Spotify
Spotify's search only works inside Spotify. When someone types a question into Google, they get web pages back, and a Spotify show page has very little text on it for Google to work with.
An episode page on your own site can carry a lot more: your full show notes, guest names, links you mentioned, and on the Pro plan a complete transcript. That gives search engines words to match against what people type. It won't happen overnight, but it can't happen at all while your episodes only exist inside an app.
For more on that side, read episode pages that show up in search.
After it's live
- Add your site to your Spotify show description so people who find you there can find the rest.
- Mention it at the end of an episode. "Show notes and links are at" plus your address gets people there.
- On Pro, connect your own domain. A short address like
brokeandbooked.comis easier to say out loud than anything else.