Start with the feed. Nearly every case of a podcast failing to appear traces back to something in the RSS feed that a directory could not read, could not fetch or would not accept — not to a slow queue and not to a rejection you were never told about.

Work down this list in order. It is arranged from most to least common, and the first four causes account for the large majority of cases.

First: which problem do you actually have?

These are different faults with different causes. Establish which one you have before troubleshooting.

  • The show has never appeared anywhere → submission or feed validity. Start at cause 1.
  • The show is listed, but a new episode is missing → the feed is fine. Skip to cause 6.
  • The show is listed on Apple but not Spotify (or vice versa) → usually ownership verification on the missing one, and the two work very differently. Go to cause 2.
  • The show vanished after previously working → go to cause 9.

1. You are still inside the window

Apple reviews new shows before listing them, and says a new show or episode can take up to 24 hours to appear in search and recommendations. Content review and busy periods can stretch that. Spotify usually lists a verified show within hours.

How to confirm: check when you submitted. If it is under 24 hours for Apple, this is probably all that is happening.

Fix: wait. Resubmitting does not speed up a review and can create duplicate entries.

2. Ownership verification was never completed

A common silent failure — but Apple and Spotify verify in completely different ways, so diagnose them separately.

Spotify, Amazon and YouTube email a verification code to the address published in your feed. If nobody reads that mailbox, the submission sits in limbo with no error and no listing.

How to confirm: find the <itunes:owner> email address in your feed and send a test message to it. Does it arrive? Check spam.

Fix: point that tag at a mailbox you actually monitor, republish the feed, wait for the platform to re-read it, then restart verification. Remember the address is publicly visible to anyone with your feed URL, so use a role address.

Apple does not do this. Apple ties a show to the Apple Account used in Apple Podcasts Connect and dropped the <itunes:owner> email requirement in 2023. If your show is missing from Apple specifically, the email tag is not the cause — check that you are signed into the right Apple Account, that the show is not sitting under a different account from a previous submission, and that the review has completed.

Fix: sign into Apple Podcasts Connect with the account that submitted the show. If someone else submitted it, use Apple’s show-transfer flow, which uses a verification tag placed in the feed rather than an email.

3. The feed is unreachable or returns an error

The directory has to fetch your feed. If it gets a 404, a 500, a timeout or a login page, there is nothing to list.

How to confirm: open the feed URL in a private browsing window. You should see raw XML, not a redirect to a website, not an error, and not a login prompt.

Or from a terminal:

curl -sI https://example.com/feed.xml

You want 200 OK. A 301 or 302 is acceptable if it lands somewhere valid; a 403 or 404 is fatal.

Fix: depends on the cause — a mistyped URL, a host outage, a feed set to private, or a firewall blocking non-browser requests. Confirm you are submitting the feed URL and not your podcast website’s URL. This is a genuinely common mix-up.

4. A required tag is missing or invalid

Directories enforce a minimum set of tags. Miss one and the feed is rejected, often with a message more generic than the actual problem.

The usual offenders:

  • Artwork outside Apple’s accepted range. It must be square, between 1400 × 1400 and 3000 × 3000 pixels, JPEG or PNG, in RGB. Non-square is a frequent failure — 1400 × 1401 is rejected.
  • Artwork URL not fetchable. The image must be publicly reachable. A link to a Google Drive or Dropbox preview page will not work; it must resolve directly to the image file.
  • Category missing, misspelled, or not one of Apple’s defined categories.
  • Explicit tag absent. Every show must declare this.
  • Language missing or not a valid code.

How to confirm: the validator reports each of these individually. For artwork specifically, the cover art checker will tell you whether the image itself passes.

5. No published episode with a working audio file

Directories will not list an empty feed, and an episode whose audio cannot be downloaded counts as no episode.

How to confirm: find the <enclosure> in your feed and open its url directly. Audio should download or play. Check the type is an audio MIME type such as audio/mpeg, and that length is not 0.

Fix: publish at least one real episode — a trailer is fine — and make sure the audio URL is public.

6. The episode has a pubDate in the future

The show is listed, the feed is valid, one episode is invisible. This is the classic cause and it produces no error anywhere.

Most apps hide items dated in the future. A timezone mistake, or scheduling an episode and forgetting, puts the date ahead of now and the episode simply waits.

How to confirm: find the <pubDate> on the missing item and compare it to the current time in UTC.

Fix: correct the date. It should appear on the next poll.

7. Duplicate or unstable guids

Every episode needs a <guid> that is unique within the feed and never changes.

Reuse a guid from another episode and apps treat the new episode as the old one — so it never appears as new. Change an existing episode’s guid and apps treat it as a brand new episode, which can produce duplicates or push a re-release to everyone.

How to confirm: list all guids in the feed and check for duplicates.

Fix: give the episode its own permanent guid. Do not “fix” a wrong guid on an already-published episode unless you understand the consequences — you may republish it to every subscriber.

8. itunes:block is set

There is a tag that explicitly tells directories not to list a show or an episode. Some hosts set it on drafts or private feeds, and it occasionally survives into a feed you meant to publish.

How to confirm: search your feed for itunes:block. If it is present and set to yes or true, that is your answer.

Fix: remove it or set it to no, then republish.

9. The show disappeared after a host migration

A show that previously worked and then vanished is usually a redirect problem.

When you move hosts, directories keep polling the old feed URL. They only follow you if the old address issues a proper permanent redirect to the new one. Without it, directories keep reading a feed that is now empty or gone — and your listing goes stale or disappears.

How to confirm: request the old feed URL and look at the status code and Location header. You want a 301 pointing at the new feed.

Fix: restore the redirect at the old host if you still have access. If the old feed is gone entirely, you may have to re-submit and, in the worst case, lose subscribers — which is why the redirect matters so much.

Still stuck

Work through the podcast distribution checklist end to end — it covers requirements this page treats as assumptions. If your feed passes every check and the show still has not appeared well outside the normal window, contact the directory’s support with your feed URL and the date you submitted. Both Apple and Spotify can see the state of a submission you cannot.