How to Put an Audio Podcast on YouTube

• There are two ways to bring an audio podcast to YouTube: deliver it through your RSS feed, or upload your own video for each episode.
• If you want the least work, use RSS. YouTube turns each episode into a video with your show art.
• If you want to control the look, make a video with your show art and a line that moves with your voice.

Two Ways to Get Your Podcast on YouTube

YouTube does not accept MP3 files on their own, and only videos can be added to a podcast there. For an audio-only show, pick one of these:

If you do not want extra work, RSS is enough. You can still make your own video for the episodes you want to stand out.

The Low-Effort Route: Deliver Through RSS

Add the RSS feed from your podcast host in YouTube Studio. YouTube uses your show art to make a still-image video for each episode and uploads it to your channel. New episodes are picked up from the feed.

Three things to know first:

• RSS delivery is only available in some countries and regions.
• YouTube's help page says podcast content uploaded this way cannot contain ads. Host-read promotions and sponsorships have to be declared.
• Once an episode is published, its audio cannot be replaced. To fix one, you upload it again from the feed as a new video.

The setup steps are in YouTube's help article "Deliver podcasts using an RSS feed".

Making Your Own Video: Add a Line That Moves With Your Voice

A video made through RSS shows your show art without any change from start to finish. If you want the screen to move, or want each episode's title on screen, make the video yourself.

A line that reacts to your voice moves as the conversation goes on. Your show art and the episode title stay fully visible.

Prepare the background as a 16:9 image. Show art is usually square, and a square image used as the background is scaled to the full width, so its top and bottom are cut off. Place the show art on the left of a wide image and put the episode title on the right. That way people can tell which episode it is from the YouTube video list.

The Sonoray editor turns up to 180 minutes of audio into a video with no watermark. No account is needed.

1. Make a 16:9 background image with your show art and the episode title.
2. Load the episode's audio file (MP3, WAV, or M4A) in the editor.
3. In Setup, set the format to 16:9 and choose your image as the background.
4. Choose Line as the shape.
5. In Adjust, open Size & position and move the line toward the bottom. The very bottom is covered by YouTube's player controls, so set Position Y to about 80%.
6. In Export, set the resolution to 1080p and export an MP4. The file will be 1920 × 1080.

To try focusing the movement on speech, open Motion in Adjust and set Frequency focus to Midrange (500 to 2,000 Hz). Music beds and jingles can still trigger the line if they contain sound in that range. This only changes how the line moves. The volume and sound of your audio stay the same.

Long episodes are exported on your computer. Use Chrome or Edge on a computer, keep the tab open, and do not let the computer sleep until the export finishes. How long it takes depends on your computer and the length of the audio.

To reuse the same look, go to Browser presets in Setup, enter a preset name, and click Save current. For the next episode, you only need to choose the new audio and background image.

Before You Upload

Uploading videos longer than 15 minutes requires a verified account. You verify by entering a code sent to your phone. After that, you can upload videos up to 12 hours long, with a file size limit of 256 GB, according to YouTube's help page as of October 2026.

In YouTube Studio, you can group the uploaded videos into a podcast so they appear together as a show on YouTube. This needs a square show image, and 1280 × 1280 is recommended. Add only full episodes.

For long episodes, add chapters in the description so listeners can jump to the topic they want. Start with 00:00, list at least three timestamps in order, and make each chapter at least 10 seconds long.

In the description, put each chapter on its own line: the time, a space, then the title.

Put Your Voice in Motion Over Your Show Art

Try the line placement first with the sample audio.

Open the editor