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How to Move a Podcast off Soundcloud

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Soundcloud is a great platform for sharing audio. The player is beautiful, and the sharing/embedding experience is excellent. But the platform does have quite a few little foibles when it comes to podcasting, and recent financial reports show that it’s future isn’t exactly rock solid…

So, if you’re thinking about jumping ship, this article is for you. I’m going to cover exactly how to move your podcast from Soundcloud to a more podcasting-specific platform. Most importantly, we can ensure that everything stays live and loud throughout. Here we go!

Where to Move Your Soundcloud Podcast

First off: platform. Where are we moving to?

For me, you have two big options here – Blubrry and Libsyn. Both are excellent services, and there’s not much to choose between them. I use Blubrry myself because I love the way it ties it with Powerpress, my favourite podcasting tool. I also really like the guys behind the company – Todd and Angelo – who’ve always been hugely helpful whenever I’ve needed it.  Finally, BluBrry have done a lot of work on migration tools, making it really easy to move a podcast in from elsewhere. So, they’re making this very job much easier.

In saying that, I know Libsyn provide help with migration too. I’ll be doing this tutorial based on Blubrry, but the process will be very similar if you choose to go with Libsyn.

Ok, having said that:

Step 1, sign up for an account with BluBrry.

How are You Delivering Your Podcast?

There are three paths here, so choose your approach carefully. This is because there are a few ways of using Soundcloud to deliver your show.

Click the one that describes your situation and you’ll be directed to the right solution.

  1. You use Soundcloud as a media host only, delivering an RSS feed from your own site.
  2. You use Soundcloud as a media host, an RSS feed and for shownotes.
  3. You use Soundcloud as a media host & RSS feed, but publish shownotes on your own site.

How to Tell if it’s a Media Host Only

You’ll probably know if you’re in the first situation, because you’ll be uploading audio files to soundcloud, copying the audio file URL, and then pasting that into a podcasting tool on your own site. Most likely, that’s Powerpress, or something like Seriously Simple Podcasting.

In this case, you’re creating a post each time for the show notes, pasting the audio file URL into a Podcast block at the bottom of the post edit page, and then publishing it live. This means that the Podcasting tool (Powerpress) is creating your RSS feed, and it’s being delivered from your own website.

If this is the case, then the solution is pretty simple – check Solution #1 below.

How to Tell if you Use a Soundcloud RSS Feed

The alternative is that your RSS feed is delivered via Soundcloud too. This means you’re using Soundcloud to fully host and deliver your show, but you might have shownotes pages on your own site as support. On those shownotes you might place the Soundcloud player, but you’re embedding it with the Soundcloud embed code. There’s no need for you to use the audio file URL in this case, as you’re not using it to create an RSS feed.

Find your podcast RSS feed

The easy test for this is to follow these steps:

  • Open the iTunes store and subscribe to your own podcast.
  • Click ‘My Podcasts’ to list your subscriptions
  • Right click on the cover art of your own podcast on the left
  • Click ‘Copy Podcast URL’
  • Open a browser window and paste the URL into the address bar
  • Look at the URL – does it start with feeds.soundcloud.com?
An example soundcloud rss feed

If the answer to the last question is yes, then Soundcloud is delivering your RSS feed. If no, then you’re delivering your own RSS feed. If it’s the first option, then you have a few more steps to cover. This is because you need to recover your RSS feed from Soundcloud.

But, don’t worry, it’s still pretty straightforward.

How to Move Your Soundcloud Podcast to BluBrry

Solution #1: Soundcloud is a Media Host Only

If you’re already using Powerpress, and soundcloud is just for hosting your files, follow these steps.

Step 1 – Link your new BluBrry Media Hosting account with Powerpress.

Do this by:

  1. Go to Your WordPress dashboard.
  2. Click the ‘Powerpress’ link in the left navigation
  3. Click ‘Switch to Advanced Mode’
  4. Click ‘Services and Stats’
  5. Click the link and enter your login details to enable the Media Hosting.
services and stats

Step 2 – Migrate your media from Soundcloud to Powerpress.

Hover over the Powerpress link on the left navigation, and then click ‘Migrate Media’.

migrate media to blubrry

Powerpress will then guide you through the migration process. It will find the podcast posts on your own website which have Soundcloud URLs attached. It will transfer those files from Soundcloud to your new BluBrry account.

This can take a day or two since it’s a pretty big process. But, come back a day later and normally you can then view the completed transfer. At this point, you can click a button to update your website. This will replace the Soundcloud URLs with BluBrry ones.

Once that’s complete, you’re done! Congratulations, you’ve now moved your Soundcloud podcast.

Solution #2: Soundcloud RSS Feed & No Previous Podcast Website

This set of steps is for you if you’ve been using Soundcloud as your SOLE podcasting platform. That means you posted shownotes there, as well as the audio files, and you don’t have shownotes or episodes published on your own website.

If you don’t even have your own website yet, then there’s a chance here to either create your own, or to use the one that BluBrry provide for you. If you want to take the first option – create your own site – then I have a course that tell you exactly how to do that here: Peerless Podcasting Websites.

Once you’ve used that to create your own website and install Powerpress, then you need to take the following steps:

Step 1 – Import your Podcast pages.

You can do this by hovering over the Powerpress link on the left navigation (within the WordPress dashboard) and clicking, ‘Import Podcast’.

import podcast to blubrry

Then, choose the Move Podcast from Soundcloud option

import from soundcloud

This will create, within your blog, a new post for every episode you’ve published on Soundcloud. It will import all of the meta data, so you should have some shownotes at least. But, you may want to fill these out a little now that they’re on your website, as it’s likely they’re a little short!

Step 2 – Migrate your RSS Feed.

Once that’s complete, your new Podcast feed is live. Now, you need to redirect iTunes towards this new feed.

First, find your podcast feed address within Powerpress. Click Powerpress > Feeds.

find blubrry feed

Then go to Soundcloud’s ‘Settings > Content’ page, found here.

Within the ‘Subscriber Redirect’ field, paste your BluBrry RSS feed.

soundcloud redirect

Once that’s complete, you’re ready to go! iTunes will pick up the redirect within a week or so (it can vary wildly) so keep your Soundcloud account active for at least that time. You can always check back to see what RSS feed address iTunes is using the method I outlined above to find your iTunes feed.

Solution #3 – Soundcloud RSS Feed & Shownotes on Your own Website

This is for you if you’ve been posting episodes to Soundcloud and using their RSS feed, but also posting shownotes on your own website. You might well have been using an embedded Soundcloud audio player here too.

I’m afraid in this situation, there’s no way to automatically link up your existing shownotes pages with the audio files. So, there’s going to be a bit of manual work here. But, you can at least get your Soundcloud files automatically imported into your BluBrry account, which makes the manual work a lot easier.

If that’s you, follow these steps:

Step 1 – First, install Powerpress.

Step 2 – Link your new BluBrry Media Hosting account with Powerpress. Do this by:

  1. Go to Your WordPress dashboard.
  2. Click the ‘Powerpress’ link in the left navigation
  3. Click ‘Switch to Advanced Mode’
  4. Click ‘Services and Stats’
  5. Click the link and enter your login details to enable the Media Hosting.
services and stats

Step 3 – Log into your BluBrry account at blubrry.com, and navigate to the ‘migrate media’ page.

migrate into blubrry

Once on that page, scroll down to the ‘Add Media URLs’ section. Paste your Soundcloud RSS feed URL into this box.

add media urls

Once this is complete, BluBrry will start to download your Soundcloud files into your BluBrry account.

Step 4 – Add BluBrry files to your existing Podcast Posts

Now, all that’s left to do is to add your podcast episodes to your shownotes pages. Again, this is the manual bit I’m afraid. But here’s the process.

  1. Open a shownotes page, and note the episode number/title
  2. Scroll down to the Powerpress block.
  3. Click ‘Link to media hosted on Blubrry.com’podcast-block
  4. Find the audio file that corresponds to the episode for this post
  5. Click ‘select’ next to that audio file. This will then insert the file URL into the Powerpress block.select-blubrry-file
  6. Click ‘Verify URL’
  7. If you now see ‘media verified successfuly’ then you’re done. The episode is now linked correctly.

Copy this process for each episode on your website.

Step 5 – Migrate your RSS Feed.

First, find your podcast feed address within Powerpress. Click Powerpress > Feeds.

find blubrry feed

Then go to Soundcloud’s ‘Settings > Content’ page, found here.

Within the ‘Subscriber Redirect’ field, paste your BluBrry RSS feed.

soundcloud redirect

Once that’s complete, you’re ready to go! iTunes will pick up the redirect within a week or so (it can vary wildly) so keep your Soundcloud account active for at least that time. You can always check back to see what RSS feed address iTunes is using the method I outlined above to find your iTunes feed.

Conclusion

Some methods are easier than others, but whatever situation you’re in, you’re not stuck. It’s easily possible to move your podcast from Soundcloud to another service.

I hope this has helped you through the process, but please do let me know if there’s anything missing. Just put your questions into the comments below.

Good luck!

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