Creating and hosting your own podcast can be such a great experience for many. It can be a creative outlet as well as a platform to market and grow your business. But, some may enter the podcasting world, give it a shot, then realize it isn’t for them.
You may be months, even years, into your podcast and realize you’re ready to switch directions and move on from your podcast. This can be a really tough decision, especially if you’ve built up any amount of an audience. Some podcasters just decide that podcasting is not their interest anymore, they may want to try new platforms. In some cases, podcasters may want to start over with an entirely new show. You might not be done with the podcasting world as a whole, but just want to start fresh.
If you do decide to end your show, that’s okay! A podcast may not be working for you or your business the way that you expected. If so, you might want to take your show off of podcast players. We are going to dive into some ways to accomplish this.
Before we jump into deleting your podcast, you may want to stop your show and leave it up for listening. That’s definitely an option for you. Some hosting platforms may provide pricing options for shows that remain active but aren’t adding additional episodes. They may readily provide this information or you can reach out to them directly to find this out.
Now if you are ready to fully remove your show from players, here are three steps you should follow.
Remove the Blog Associated with Your Show
If you’ve been following any of our podcasting advice when hosting your show, you probably have created a blog to correspond with your podcast on your website. These posts would have housed your embedded player, show notes, important links, and transcriptions for every episode. When removing your podcast, you don’t want to forget to remove the blog from your site. After deleting your show from players, the embedded links will no longer lead to it and the post will be pretty much useless. This is a surprisingly easy step to miss in this process.
Delete Your RSS Feed in Your Hosting Platform
This step is another pretty important one. You’ll want to completely remove your RSS feed from your hosting platform. The popular hosting platforms make this pretty simple for you.
Acast
In Acast, you simply have to log into your account and then head to settings. From here, scroll all the way to the bottom where you’ll see the ‘danger zone’ tab. After expanding this, you’ll be able to click the delete button.
Libsyn
Libsyn also makes this pretty easy for its users. All you have to do is log into your account, and navigate to your settings and billing. Then, you just have to click close show and close podcast.
Removing Your Podcast from Players
The last step you’ll need to take is to remove your show from the major players. This will be the final step in saying goodbye to your podcast, it will officially be taken off of the internet.
Apple
The first major platform you’ll want to remove from is Apple.
- Open the iTunes desktop app and sign in with your Apple ID.
- Pick the podcast that you want to be deleted
- At the bottom left of the screen, click on Report a Concern.
- Under the dropdown, select “Remove a Podcast”
- 5. Fill in your email address and fill out why you want to have your podcast removed. Once you’ve completed that, select Submit.
Spotify
From the Spotify website, you’ll want to head to their contact us page. You’ll send them your RSS feed and the link to the show you want to be taken down. Then, the Spotify team will take it from there.
Mic Check Society
If you’ve made it this far and realize you aren’t quite ready to quit podcasting yet, join us in Mic Check Society. We have a community of podcasters sharing their questions, concerns, successes, and more in one Facebook group. Members of Mic Check Society also have access to monthly training from industry experts, hot eat calls with those experts, silent coworking sessions, and resources to help your podcast succeed.
