What is a podcast, really?

Not an audio file. Not an app. A feed you control.

An audio file sitting on a website is just a file. You can link to it, people can download it, and that’s where it ends.

A podcast is a feed: a small document on the web, written in a format called RSS, that lists your episodes. Every podcast app, from Apple Podcasts to a tiny open-source player, reads that document, shows your show, and fetches new episodes automatically when you add them to the list.

That feed is the podcast. The audio files are what the feed points to. The apps are just readers.

Why this matters

• Anyone can subscribe from anywhere. One feed, hundreds of apps, no gatekeeper.
• You own it if you control its address. If your feed lives at a URL on your own domain, you can move your files to a different host tomorrow and nobody notices.
• No account required to listen. Listeners don’t need to sign up with anyone to follow you.

What you need for a podcast to exist

1. Audio files hosted somewhere reachable on the web.
2. A feed that lists them, with a title, description and artwork.
3. That’s it. Directories and apps are how people find it, not what makes it a podcast.

The rest of this site is about doing those things well, and keeping control of them.