SoundCloud is a very popular music, radio and podcasting platform. They’ve been around since 2007 and offer many great tools for their users who need it for their audio-based projects. They have more than 75 million users.
If you’re a podcaster, SoundCloud was one of the pioneers in the industry, and they offer both free and paid plans for podcasting. It doesn’t matter if you are on the free Basic plan or the Pro Unlimited plan – Both plans allow you to use the SoundCloud embed player for your podcast website embeds.
If you’re not hosting your podcast with SoundCloud just yet, we’ll share our review of their podcast hosting offering first. Then we’ll continue and explain how to use the SoundCloud audio player on different websites, how to use SoundCloud on a custom URL and how to create a podcast website based on your SoundCloud RSS feed.
SoundCloud is still a highly popular podcast host. ListenNotes reports that it’s is the second most popular RSS hosting companies (with 6.35% of the market). Why is their podcast hosting so high in the rankings?
The platform offers access to more than 175M unique monthly listeners. It also bakes in many social features around the audio tracks, and allows podcasters to connect with listeners. Their free hosting plan includes up to 3 hours of uploads per month, basic insights, and the possibility to accept donations for your show.
The $12/month plan includes unlimited upload time, the possibility to get paid for your plays, advanced listener insights, and unlimited downloads (as opposed to 100 in the free plan).
SoundCloud embed options
So you have your podcast on SoundCloud, and need to embed it on your podcast website? You can always use the embed audio player or use a custom audio player if your website supports it. We’ll review a few options for both with popular website builders –
Embed SoundCloud Player on a website
On any website you can add an “iframe” that is provided by SoundCloud. An iframe helps to embed another component or document from another URL, within the current HTML document. To simplify, if you want to display a media frame from another website (like a YouTube video player, a SoundCloud audio player etc.), you can simply copy the iframe provided by each platform and paste it on your site. Here’s an example with the SoundCloud embed player:
Embed on a WordPress website
On WordPress it’s quite easy to paste embeds and display media players from iframes. You’ll simply need to copy the embed code from the provider, and paste it on any WordPress page or post. This would require a lot of manual work if you have hundreds of podcast episodes, but you can also probably automate it with a plugin or by coding the integration yourself. Here’s an example of an embed player you can use on any website:
Custom SoundCloud URL on a Podcastpage website
If you need to create your own SoundCloud podcast website, Podcastpage is one of the best and easiest solutions. Podcastpage supports embed audio players from any provider. Furthermore, it can automate the import process and import all of your podcast episodes from your RSS feed – with your SoundCloud embed player already. The platform supports importing embeds from 20+ podcast hosting providers. There is no need to copy or paste any link manually or creating each episode from scratch.
You just need to go to the Audio Player settings on the customizer, and click on Use Audio Embed Player. That’s it, all of your episodes will now show the custom SoundCloud player.
You can easily toggle between the embed player and the regular audio player. It’s also easy to use the embed player only on a select number of episodes, if you prefer. You can also combine embed players from multiple sources if needed, like audio + video embeds on the same episode/post.
Even if you don’t use the embed player, your stats would continue to count against your podcast hosting platform. You’ll be displaying a different type of audio player but from the same source.
Conclusion – SoundCloud Podcast Websites
It’s not always easy to create a website based on your SoundCloud RSS feed. This task might involve complex imports or lot’s of manual work. Luckily, Podcastpage was created just for that reason. It makes it super easy for podcasters to build beautiful websites for their podcast in just 30 seconds.
You can sign up today for a free trial (no credit card required) and explore the features available on Podcastpage. It’s very intuitive and can be used by anyone – no coding is required and there’s an easy-to-use visual customizer.
