The public apps, your own site, a closed feed, or all three. Which one is right depends entirely on who the show is for.
By Will Nash
28 October 2026
Most firms answer this by putting the show everywhere, which sounds like breadth and usually means nobody can tell which placement did anything.
The question underneath is simpler. Who is this show for, and where do those people already listen?
You own the feed, not the platform
Worth being clear about the mechanics, because it changes how the decision feels. Your episodes live with a podcast host and that host publishes a feed. Apple, Spotify and the rest read that feed. They are windows onto your show rather than owners of it.
That means choosing platforms is a low-stakes decision you can revise, and choosing a host is a slightly higher-stakes one, because moving later means redirecting the feed. Pick a host that supports private feeds and gives you the download data, and you have kept every option open.
The public apps
Apple and Spotify are where people who already listen to podcasts will look for you, and putting a show there costs nothing beyond the setup.
The thing they will not do is find you an audience. A firm's show is not going to be recommended by an app to strangers, and treating a listing as distribution is the most common mistake in launch planning. The apps are a convenience for people who already know the show exists.
Your own site
This is the placement most firms undervalue. An episode page on your own site is the only version you fully control, the only one a search engine can index properly, and the only one you can put next to a call to action.
It is also where the transcript belongs, which does more for being found than the audio file ever will.
Put relevant episodes on the service pages they relate to, rather than only in a blog-style archive. A partner sending a prospect to a page about a service line is better served if the page also carries a fifteen-minute conversation about it.
YouTube
Worth a thought if your show has a video element, because it is a search surface as much as a video platform, and plenty of people treat it as a place to listen rather than watch.
Without video it is more effort than it returns. A static image with an audio track does not perform well there and takes time to produce.
A closed feed
If the audience is your employees, your members, or a named group of clients, a private feed is the right answer and a public listing may actively be the wrong one. That decision has enough in it to be worth its own discussion, and we have written about it separately.
Do not embed audio in the email itself. Link to the episode page on your site, which gets you the click, the transcript and the call to action in one move, and avoids the various ways email clients mangle audio players.
What to decide first
Start from the audience. A show for prospective clients needs the public apps and a proper home on your site. A show for existing clients needs the site and the email, and may not need the apps at all. A show for employees needs a closed feed.
Then decide what you will look at. Every placement produces different numbers, and if you publish to six places without deciding which one matters, you will end up reporting on whichever is easiest to export.
Where this does not help
If nobody has heard of the show, none of this fixes it. Placement decides where a listener can find you, not whether they ever hear about you, which is a promotion question.
In short
You own the feed, so platform choices stay reversible and the host choice deserves the thought. Public apps serve people who already know about you, your own site is the version that works hardest, and the audience should settle the rest. Decide which numbers you will actually read before you publish to six places.
We are an AI-native podcast agency, and we set hosting and placement up so the feed stays yours whatever happens afterwards. If you are standing a show up and want this decided properly the first time, get in touch.
