How to migrate to Castcore

We know — migrating a show off a platform feels like the kind of task you put off forever. We know the feeling well, because we used other platforms and migrated more than once before we decided to build the one we actually wanted, for ourselves and for you. Here’s exactly what happens, with nothing skipped.

What to expect

The import is usually quick — a few minutes from logging in to a published feed. A large back catalogue takes longer, because we don’t just copy your files: we re-encode every episode with the Fraunhofer AAC encoder and conform the loudness to spec. A hundred episodes typically take a few minutes; a very large or very long catalogue can take more.

Keep your old host for a few weeks. Plan on at least four weeks of overlap. That gives every podcast app time to notice the new address, and it keeps your episodes living in two independent places during the move. Once every episode in Castcore Manager shows its green mark, you’ll know we have the whole catalogue — and we’re not the type to let it go.

Every step

1. Try Castcore. You get 14 days to see how it feels. If you like it, subscribe to a plan during the trial or when it ends.
2. Create a show and choose Import. You’ll pick the slug you want — the slug is the your-slug part of your public address — and paste your current host’s feed URL, which is where we pull your episodes from.
3. Hit Start import. We download every episode, process the audio, and re-encode it with Fraunhofer AAC. When an episode is fully in, it gets a green mark on its thumbnail.
4. Review it with your listeners’ eyes. Open shows.castcore.fi/your-slug and check the show looks right — artwork, episodes, descriptions. Your feed lives at feeds.castcore.fi/shows/your-slug/feed.xml; that’s the address you’ll hand to your old host in the next step.
5. Point your old host at the new feed. In your current host’s dashboard there’s a setting called something like “new feed URL”, “redirect”, or “relocate”. Put your Castcore feed address there. That’s the whole switch.

After a few weeks, when you’re confident every platform has followed, you can cancel the old host.

Why you don’t add the feed to each platform yourself

Because your show isn’t on just one platform — it’s on every app a listener might use. When you set the redirect on your old feed, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music and the rest follow it automatically on their next refresh and move every subscriber across. You never have to log into Apple Podcasts Connect or Spotify for Podcasters yourself. And believe us: you don’t want to.

The redirect is part of the RSS standard, which is the whole point of a standard feed — your audience comes with you wherever you go, instead of being trapped inside one company’s app.

The one exception: YouTube

YouTube is the only major platform that doesn’t follow the redirect. It ingests podcasts only through its own submission flow, so it needs a few manual steps. (This is the same reason a “claim” on some platforms can fail mid-migration — they want to verify ownership directly.)

Two things to do first:

• Unlock the feed for YouTube. Castcore locks your feed by default (Show settings → Advanced → Locked). The lock is a good thing in general — it tells other hosting platforms they’re not allowed to grab your feed, which protects you from feed hijacking. It does not stop Apple, Spotify or anyone else from distributing your show. But YouTube won’t let you claim a locked feed, so untick Locked before you submit, then re-lock it afterward if you like.
• Make sure your owner email is public. YouTube verifies ownership against the <itunes:owner> email in your feed, so it can’t be hidden.

Then, in YouTube Studio:

1. From the left menu, open Content.
2. Choose the Podcasts tab.
3. If your old show is already there, open Details → RSS settings and enter your new Castcore feed URL.
4. If it isn’t, choose Add podcast and follow the prompts. If you’ve never published a podcast on YouTube before, it may ask you to verify your identity with a government-issued ID first. After that, you’ll paste your new feed URL and a confirmation code YouTube emails to your feed’s owner address.
5. Either way, publish the show manually once YouTube finishes importing it. That last click is YouTube’s way of letting you confirm how your show looks before it goes live.

That’s it. The redirect handles everyone else quietly in the background, and your listeners never have to do a thing.

Yes, you could technically import someone else’s show

RSS is an open standard, so nothing physically stops you from pointing us at any feed in the world — Joe Rogan’s included. Here’s the thing, though: it wouldn’t get you anything. Your import only ever plays from Castcore, and the only thing that actually moves an audience is a redirect on the original feed — which lives in the real owner’s account, not yours. So you’d end up with a private copy of a show you don’t own, re-encoded on your own dime, on a paid account with your real name and card attached to it.

At which point you’d get a slightly disappointed email from us, and then a ban.

So: import your own shows. It’s more fun, and the audience actually comes with you.