What is a Redirect?

All you need to know about podcast redirects!

You may have come across the term “redirect” or “301 redirect” in relation to podcasting, especially when looking to move your podcast to a new hosting platform. Put simply, a redirect is what allows you to move your show from host to host without losing your audience or catalog. Let’s learn more!

What exactly is a redirect?

To successfully migrate to a new hosting platform, and ensure that your audience and catalog stays intact, podcasters use something called a redirect (or 301 redirect). You can think of a redirect as similar to moving to a new home address. You bring everything with you, but the address changes!

The RSS Feed URL is the home address of your podcast. This Feed is what gives the various podcasting apps information on your show including title, description, and other metadata. It also provides these apps with all the audio files for your show.

Listening apps, such as Spotify and Apple Podcasts, “read” the RSS Feed for your show and populate the episodes and any accompanying information. You can’t have a podcast without an RSS Feed!

How does it work?

A redirect is what updates the various listening platforms. When you set up a redirect for your show, all the listening platforms you signed up with will ‘read’ your previous hosting platform's RSS Feed which will ‘tell’ them to check your new RedCircle RSS Feed. Eventually, the listening platforms ‘learn’ to check your RedCircle RSS Feed instead of your previous hosting platform's.

All of this happens on the backend, so your audience has no idea that you moved to a new hosting platform. Their listening remains uninterrupted!

How do I set up a redirect to or from RedCircle?

Great question! We have step-by-step instructions on migrating your show to and/or from RedCircle in our Help Center:

Need more assistance with your redirect? No problem! Reach out to our Support team and we’ll help you out ASAP!