You already know that your podcast wants top-level cowl artwork to look nice in all of the podcast apps and directories. You may also additional improve the expertise in your viewers, create promotional belongings, and reinforce your branding by making distinctive art work for every episode. However you should compensate for the way every app may show the episode picture (particularly Apple Podcasts).
Please share this episode with anybody struggling to make their episode art work seem!
Fast suggestions for episode art work
There are a bunch of different images you could make for your podcast and individual episodes (I’ve previously talked about 7). Listed below are a couple of fast tips for episode pictures.
- Comply with the identical specs as podcast cowl artwork: 1,400- to three,000-pixel sq., RGB colour, JPEG or PNG, and smaller than 512 KB (ideally nearer to 200 KB).
- Maintain your branding as constant as potential: fonts, colours, structure, icons, temper, and such.
- Embrace your brand or podcast title, nevertheless it does not should be as outstanding.
- Focus the art work on the episode’s title and easy imagery that helps that title and the episode’s content material.
- Guarantee crucial elements will be understood should you shrink the art work to a 1-inch (2.5-cm) sq., however most episode art work will show nearly as vast as your smartphone’s display screen.
- Do not forget that this art work will present most prominently within the “now taking part in” interface of the app, probably the lock display screen, and probably an hooked up gadget (like a smartwatch, TV, or in-car show).
Now that you’ve episode art work, there are three locations you need to put it to make it present up in podcast apps.
1. ID3 tags
Audio information can have metadata embedded within the information by way of the “ID3 tags.” This consists of the title, writer, chapters, different textual content, and pictures.
(Apart: I could not discover that “ID3” truly 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 below are the ID3 editors I like to recommend:
- ID3 Editor from PA Software ($15, Home windows and macOS)—This was the very 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 ought to be the primary and most essential place in your episode art work. Even should you do not make distinctive pictures for every episode, be certain that your episodes at all times embody your major podcast cowl artwork within the ID3 tags.
2. RSS feed
There are two RSS tags that may maintain your episode-level art work: the <itunes:image> tag from Apple’s “iTunes namespace,” and the <podcast:images> tag from the Podcasting 2.0 “podcast namespace.”
You may see these (particularly the legacy tag from the “iTunes namespace”) on the high degree in your entire podcast (referred to as “channel-level”), they usually can be used for particular person episodes (referred to as “item-level”). These hyperlink out to the quilt artwork hosted someplace.
Like with all issues Podcasting 2.0, the <podcast:pictures> tag allows you to do extra! You may already specify completely different pictures for various sizes. For instance, a picture with solely an icon at 150 pixels vast, a picture with the title and icon at 600 pixels vast, and a picture with extra at 1,200 pixels vast. There is likely to be different options sooner or later, too!
Interjection: Apple Podcasts nonetheless will not show episode art work
Sarcastically, Apple Podcasts does not truly show episode pictures 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>
Guardian tag: <merchandise>
The episode art work.
It is best to use this tag when you could have a top quality, episode-specific picture you prefer to listeners to see.
Specify your episode art work utilizing the href attribute within the tag. RSS Feed Sample.
Relying on their gadget, listeners see your episode art work in various sizes. Subsequently, be certain that your design is efficient at each its unique measurement and at thumbnail measurement. It is best to embody a title, model, or supply title as a part of your episode art work. To keep away from technical points if you replace your episode art work, remember to:
- Change the art work file title and URL on the identical time
- Confirm the online server internet hosting your art work permits HTTP head requests
Paintings should be a minimal measurement of 1400 x 1400 pixels and a most measurement 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.
Make certain the file kind within the URL matches the precise file kind of the picture file.
“A Podcaster’s Guide to RSS,” retrieved December 19, 2022. Emphasis added.
For some years now, the solely locations your episode art work confirmed in Apple podcasts have 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 (perhaps with the discharge of iOS 16 or certainly one of its updates), Apple ended even these behaviors. We used to marvel which conduct was the “bug”: not displaying episode art work to followers, or displaying it in any respect. Now, evidently displaying it in any respect was the bug. So now, it appears the solely place Apple shows the episode art work 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 art work to indicate in Apple Podcasts.
And I am not referring to the trick of adjusting your show-level art work each time you publish a brand new episode (like No Agenda does)! This might sound to work, however just for the newest episode. It leaves previous episodes to indicate the identical picture in Apple Podcasts and any app that ignores episode-level pictures.
3. Chapters (episode art work workaround for Apple Podcasts)
Whereas Apple Podcasts doesn’t at present help its personal <itunes:picture> tag for episode art work, it does help chapters and chapter pictures! In reality, I used it for this very part of the podcast to exhibit a distinct picture in a chapter.
Chapters are a means of dividing your content material in podcast apps. This permits your viewers to rapidly 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 expand chapters to support rich content, like image galleries and basic-formatted text.)
Like episode art work, chapters are a means of enhancing the expertise in your viewers. And you should use chapters as a trick to pressure the Apple Podcasts app to show episode art work!
You need to use a distinct 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 principle podcast cowl artwork.
You probably have solely a single episode picture, there are 3 ways you would pressure this to show utilizing chapters, however every has some drawbacks.
- Make solely a single chapter and make it embody the episode art work. 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 doubtlessly complicated to see solely a single chapter. It is like providing you with notes to a speech and the entire define is merely the phrase “Speech.”
- Put the episode art work in each chapter. Since a chapter with out a picture will revert to the podcast cowl artwork, you would 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 art work in solely the primary chapter(s). A hybrid of the earlier strategies, this may trigger the episode art work 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 absolutely brief, then you would 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, nevertheless it additionally means Apple Podcasts will revert to the show-level podcast cowl artwork after shifting previous the chapter with the picture.
Whereas this tip focuses on Apple Podcasts, I think it could additionally work for some other app that helps chapters however not episode art work.
Is episode art work value making?
(I appear to be asking “Is it value it?” questions lots currently!)
You want to bear in mind it is potential a podcast app or listing nonetheless will not show your episode art work even should you implement all three of those strategies.
Apart from that, a few of your viewers may by no means even see your stunning episode art work as a result of their gadget display screen is off or lined throughout the entire time they take heed to your episode.
So is it actually well worth the effort to make particular person art work 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 use the episode art work (along with several other layouts of the same design) to make your podcast look higher if you embed it and advertise! For instance, I take the very same sq. art work I put in my episode and I publish it on my Instagram (@theDanielJLewis) to advertise my new episode.
Please take a look at my earlier episode for assets on how to create your episode pictures: “7 Kinds of Podcast Images for Marketing and Branding.”
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Disclosure
This publish could comprise hyperlinks to services or products with which I’ve an affiliate relationship. I’ll obtain compensation out of your actions by way of such hyperlinks. Nonetheless, I do not let that corrupt my perspective and I do not suggest solely associates.
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