You already know that your podcast wants top-level cowl artwork to look nice in all of the podcast apps and directories. You can too additional improve the expertise in your viewers, create promotional belongings, and reinforce your branding by making distinctive paintings for every episode. However it is advisable compensate for a way every app may show the episode picture (particularly Apple Podcasts).
Please share this episode with anybody struggling to make their episode paintings seem!
Fast suggestions for episode paintings
There are a bunch of various photos you possibly can make in your podcast and particular person episodes (I’ve beforehand talked about 7). Listed here are a number of fast pointers for episode photos.
- Comply with the identical specs as podcast cowl artwork: 1,400- to three,000-pixel sq., RGB shade, JPEG or PNG, and smaller than 512 KB (ideally nearer to 200 KB).
- Preserve your branding as constant as doable: fonts, colours, format, icons, temper, and such.
- Embody your brand or podcast identify, but it surely does not must be as outstanding.
- Focus the paintings on the episode’s title and easy imagery that helps that title and the episode’s content material.
- Guarantee a very powerful elements might be understood if you happen to shrink the paintings to a 1-inch (2.5-cm) sq., however most episode paintings will show nearly as broad as your smartphone’s display screen.
- Do not forget that this paintings will present most prominently within the “now taking part in” interface of the app, presumably the lock display screen, and presumably an hooked up gadget (like a smartwatch, TV, or in-car show).
Now that you’ve episode paintings, there are three locations it’s best to put it to make it present up in podcast apps.
1. ID3 tags
Audio recordsdata can have metadata embedded within the recordsdata via the “ID3 tags.” This consists of the title, writer, chapters, different textual content, and pictures.
(Apart: I could not discover that “ID3” really stands for something!)
Overcast and several other different podcast apps use the picture inside your ID3 tags. Some automations (resembling Zapier, Repurpose.io, webpage-embedded gamers, and platform importers) additionally use the picture within the ID3 tags.
Any ID3 editor ought to allow you to add not less than one picture (and I like to recommend including just one to your ID3 tags). Listed here are the ID3 editors I like to recommend:
- ID3 Editor from PA Software program ($15, Home windows and macOS)—This was one of the best $15 I’ve spent in podcasting!
- iTunes (free; Home windows, OS X, and macOS as much as 10.14) / Apple Music (macOS 10.15 and later)
- Mp3Tag (free for Home windows, $19.99 for macOS)
- Your podcast-hosting supplier’s built-in tagging instruments
This must be the primary and most vital place in your episode paintings. Even if you happen to do not make distinctive photos for every episode, be sure that your episodes all the time embody your predominant podcast cowl artwork within the ID3 tags.
2. RSS feed
There are two RSS tags that may maintain your episode-level paintings: the <itunes:picture> tag from Apple’s “iTunes namespace,” and the <podcast:photos> tag from the Podcasting 2.0 “podcast namespace.”
You may see these (particularly the legacy tag from the “iTunes namespace”) on the prime stage in your entire podcast (known as “channel-level”), they usually can be used for particular person episodes (known as “item-level”). These hyperlink out to the quilt artwork hosted someplace.
Like with all issues Podcasting 2.0, the <podcast:photos> tag permits you to do extra! You possibly can already specify completely different photos for various sizes. For instance, a picture with solely an icon at 150 pixels broad, a picture with the title and icon at 600 pixels broad, and a picture with extra at 1,200 pixels broad. There could be different options sooner or later, too!
Interjection: Apple Podcasts nonetheless will not show episode paintings
Mockingly, Apple Podcasts does not really show episode photos from RSS feeds utilizing Apple’s personal namespace tag! Their documentation even nonetheless encourages utilizing it for an “episode-specific picture you prefer to listeners to see”!
Episode tag: <itunes:picture>
Mum or dad tag: <merchandise>
The episode paintings.
It is best to use this tag when you’ve got a top quality, episode-specific picture you prefer to listeners to see.
Specify your episode paintings utilizing the href attribute within the tag. RSS Feed Pattern.
Relying on their gadget, listeners see your episode paintings in various sizes. Due to this fact, be sure that your design is efficient at each its authentic dimension and at thumbnail dimension. It is best to embody a title, model, or supply identify as a part of your episode paintings. To keep away from technical points whenever you replace your episode paintings, be sure you:
- Change the paintings file identify and URL on the similar time
- Confirm the online server internet hosting your paintings permits HTTP head requests
Paintings have to be a minimal dimension of 1400 x 1400 pixels and a most dimension of 3000 x 3000 pixels, in JPEG or PNG format, 72 dpi, with applicable file extensions (.jpg, .png), and within the RGB colorspace. These necessities are completely different from the usual RSS picture tag specs.
Be certain that the file kind within the URL matches the precise file kind of the picture file.
“A Podcaster’s Information to RSS,” retrieved December 19, 2022. Emphasis added.
For some years now, the solely locations your episode paintings confirmed in Apple podcasts had been in episode search outcomes, on the Apple Podcasts webpage preview, and when taking part in an episode from the catalog—not from the library! However apparently, someday in 2022 (possibly with the discharge of iOS 16 or certainly one of its updates), Apple ended even these behaviors. We used to marvel which habits was the “bug”: not displaying episode paintings to followers, or displaying it in any respect. Now, plainly displaying it in any respect was the bug. So now, it appears the solely place Apple shows the episode paintings is on the Apple Podcasts episode webpage preview, like this one.
Till Apple Podcasts fixes this—in the event that they ever do—there’s one trick I found out to nonetheless get episode paintings to indicate in Apple Podcasts.
And I am not referring to the trick of adjusting your show-level paintings each time you publish a brand new episode (like No Agenda does)! This may appear to work, however just for the most recent episode. It leaves previous episodes to indicate the identical picture in Apple Podcasts and any app that ignores episode-level photos.
3. Chapters (episode paintings workaround for Apple Podcasts)
Whereas Apple Podcasts doesn’t presently assist its personal <itunes:picture> tag for episode paintings, it does assist chapters and chapter photos! In reality, I used it for this very part of the podcast to show a special picture in a chapter.
Chapters are a manner of dividing your content material in podcast apps. This permits your viewers to shortly see your content material define; skip to or away from sections; and see a title, optionally available picture, and an optionally available hyperlink for every chapter. (I’ve proposed for Podcasting 2.0 to develop chapters to assist wealthy content material, like picture galleries and basic-formatted textual content.)
Like episode paintings, chapters are a manner of enhancing the expertise in your viewers. And you should utilize chapters as a trick to power the Apple Podcasts app to show episode paintings!
You should utilize a special picture for every chapter, and Apple Podcasts and different apps will change to that picture whereas that chapter performs. When a chapter is taking part in with out a picture, podcast apps will change again to the primary podcast cowl artwork.
If in case you have solely a single episode picture, there are 3 ways you possibly can power this to show utilizing chapters, however every has some drawbacks.
- Make solely a single chapter and make it embody the episode paintings. This may work, however the presence of any chapters (even just one) will set off the chapter interface in podcast apps. That turns into wasted house and probably complicated to see solely a single chapter. It is like supplying you with notes to a speech and the entire define is merely the phrase “Speech.”
- Put the episode paintings in each chapter. Since a chapter with out a picture will revert to the podcast cowl artwork, you possibly can insert the identical picture into each chapter and your viewers would by no means see it change. However that is cumbersome to do. It additionally unnecessarily bloats the MP3 as a result of every chapter’s picture takes up more room, even when it is the identical picture on a number of chapters.
- Put the episode paintings in solely the primary chapter(s). A hybrid of the earlier strategies, it will trigger the episode paintings to show when your viewers first begins taking part in the episode and for so long as that first chapter continues. In case your first chapter is de facto brief, then you possibly can put the picture within the subsequent chapter, however not all of the chapters. This would possibly not take as a lot house as repeating the picture throughout all chapters, but it surely additionally means Apple Podcasts will revert to the show-level podcast cowl artwork after transferring previous the chapter with the picture.
Whereas this tip focuses on Apple Podcasts, I think it might additionally work for every other app that helps chapters however not episode paintings.
Is episode paintings value making?
(I appear to be asking “Is it value it?” questions so much these days!)
You want to remember it is doable a podcast app or listing nonetheless will not show your episode paintings even if you happen to implement all three of those strategies.
Apart from that, a few of your viewers may by no means even see your lovely episode paintings as a result of their gadget display screen is off or coated throughout the entire time they take heed to your episode.
So is it actually definitely worth the effort to make particular person paintings for every episode?
I believe it’s! First, as a result of it enhances the expertise in your viewers. And second, as a result of you should utilize the episode paintings (together with a number of different layouts of the identical design) to make your podcast look higher whenever you embed it and put it up for sale! For instance, I take the very same sq. paintings I put in my episode and I put up it on my Instagram (@theDanielJLewis) to advertise my new episode.
Please take a look at my earlier episode for sources on how to create your episode photos: “7 Sorts of Podcast Pictures for Advertising and marketing and Branding.”
Want podcasting assist?
In the event you want one-on-one assist, or you have not launched your podcast, but, click on right here to request a private teaching and consulting session and we’ll join you with a podcasting professional we belief!
Ask your questions or share your suggestions
- Touch upon the present notes
- Go away a voicemail at (903) 231-2221
- E-mail suggestions@TheAudacitytoPodcast.com (audio recordsdata welcome)
Comply with The Audacity to Podcast
Disclosure
This put up might include hyperlinks to services or products with which I’ve an affiliate relationship. I could obtain compensation out of your actions via such hyperlinks. Nevertheless, I do not let that corrupt my perspective and I do not suggest solely associates.
