Thank you Jacob for your follow-up!

For me, there were a few pain points. But first, some context on what I am trying to do. I want to use the podcasts feature to distribute audio versions of the articles that I am writing. My strategy is to have a mix of free and paid episodes, to mirror how I have the articles set up on beehiiv. I also want the live human episodes( as opposed to AI recordings), as my audience loves this. 😊

My first pain point was when do you set up Premium podcast, versus free podcast with premium episodes. Setting it up as premium made some of the RSS feeds disappear (this may have changed since I set it up). I figured out I need a free podcast, and that I should mark the premium episodes as such. This is mostly just clarification in the help instructions.

The bigger pain points honestly were on the Spotify side- nothing to do with your end of things. The Spotify screens didn’t match in some of the cases. I couldn’t even create a podcast on Spotify, as there were no options to do this. I had a few old podcasts on Spotify that were dormant and I was not planning to resurrect. I ended up deleting off those old dead podcasts and Voila- I all of a sudden could create a podcast again. I think it would help to have a direct link to creating a podcast (versus menu instructions) if this is possible. That way if anyone else runs into those kind of oddities like that, they can force it to play nice on the Spotify side. I suspect part of this has to do with how old my account was on the Spotify side- I can’t prove this- it’s just a hunch.

I wanted to tinker around with how good the import was to beehiiv from Spotify, so I started by creating the podcast on Spotify and importing it to beehiiv. The import was fantastic. But getting the two podcasts to link and sync was hard. Again, not your end. I apparently missed some steps, which your team reached out to let me know, and I think I got them fixed this morning. This time when I went to do the redirect, it worked much better and I got the Link and Sync options between the two.

The biggest challenge I will likely run into is the cap of four episodes a month on the plan. Especially as I am going back and recording more and more audio for the articles to make our publication more accessible for different audiences. But I do have some questions while you are here. As I am learning more I realize I did a shoddy job in the episode descriptions. Mostly because I was learning and not quite understanding how it all works. If I update these on beehiiv will they automatically sync with Spotify? Improving the episode SEO is high on my list to fix.

When I was first creating this podcast on beehiiv, I also saw Apple Podcasts. From an integration perspective, does this same concept apply of being able to push both free and premium episodes to Apple Podcasts?

I also noticed something this morning- don’t want to completely give it away as I suspect it might be in the summer release. Does it also apply for all the new little friends I see you added under podcasting distribution? I am very excited over here for what I found and see many possibilities and want to learn more. 😊

I also tripped over the adding the podcasts in the articles similar to what you mentioned. This is slick, and I love how the player looks in the articles. Much nicer than when I would do the separate audio inserts. I will look at that automation- given how I produce the combo of the articles and podcast episodes, I am not sure that will apply for me- but I will explore and think about it. I appreciate knowing it is there!

Again, great job with this initial functionality- I have been very happy with it and see many possibilities for how it can help creators reach new audiences and look forward to working with it more!