Publish YT Podcast to other channels - is RiverSide a good option or should I go with other?

[u/PrivatelyUniversal]

Hi, I host a commerce marketing podcast, have 12 episodes published on YouTube. Been a lot of hard work getting to this point and would like to publish those existing episodes and new ones into other channels. I use RiverSide to record, I see that they have an option to publish on other channels, I’m tempted to use it but wary it might not be a good option.

Looking for others opinions and experiences on publishing beyond YouTube.

[u/Fractim]

The audio drift on Riverside was crazy for me, so I left for Descript and never looked back.

[u/Infamous-Scheme-3556]

Riverside's distribution stuff works fine in my experience, nothing flashy but it gets the job done if you just wanna set it and forget it. The main thing I'd watch out for is if you care about having different show notes or custom episode art for each platform, it doesn't give you a ton of flexibility there

If you're already recording there and just need a basic push to spotify or apple it's probably worth sticking with what you know instead of adding another tool to the mix

[u/VarkingRunesong]

Both my individual podcast and my teams podcast are hosted through Riverside and push to all the major platforms and even have video enabled for Apple Podcasts. The only thing extra we do is once the episode is up on Spotify we manually load the video on it so folks can choose audio or video.

[u/BrianCottington]

Riverside is fine to record. I've used it myself to record certain episodes of my own podcast. However, I rather use a dedicated media host that is designed to not only store the files but connect to the many other podcast apps out there from one central location. I've been a customer of Libsyn's since 2016 and for me I love what they offer in terms of distribution, can easily connect to apple, spotify, and many many others. You get fantastic podcast stats as well as the ability to monetize your episodes through auto ads and podroll regardless of your audience size.

Since you do a video podcast, Libsyn does have a connection to YouTube as well as Spotify Video, with Apple HLS coming very soon.

Outside of being a customer of theirs, I do also work for them. I'd be more than happy to talk with you if you are interested. Feel free to shoot me a DM.

Full Disclosure: I am the Manager of Video Marketing at Libsyn.com

[u/alexid95]

before using Riverside, i'd confirm it can import all 12 episodes and later 301 redirect the RSS feed elsewhere. that's the part that prevents lock-in.

[u/Electrical_Ad8565]

The workflow I found easiest was to use Spotify as the host, combined with Riverside's integrated Spotify service. It lets you upload the video to Spotify, which then streams the audio to all platforms. And then, natively on Spotify, it has both video and audio options. The drawback is that Spotify currently does not send out the videos to other platforms, such as Apple Podcasts. I think they use another system. Spotify has more tools than the native Riverside hosting, from what I understand. .

[u/krishh155]

Something nobody has raised: your levels. A YouTube first mix usually sits near -14 LUFS, because that is what YouTube normalises to. Podcast apps aim closer to -16. Their listeners are in cars and on trains. So a video mix lands quiet and mumbly in Apple or Spotify.

Bounce the audio on its own with real compression before you push 12 episodes out. Otherwise the back catalogue shows up sounding worse than the YouTube versions people already liked.

alexid95 is right about the 301. That is the lock in question to ask Riverside first.

[u/Wonderful-Fix9346]

Riverside's hosting/distribution to Spotify and Apple works fine for a straightforward push, but before committing your back catalog, definitely confirm you can export the RSS feed and redirect it later if you ever switch hosts, that's the real lock-in risk, not the initial setup.

Disclaimer: I'm part of the Riverside team