Quick start guide: Before setting up your show for Syndication

Before you start setting up and uploading your show, please read this guide carefully. It explains how syndication works at Syndicast, what we require from your show, and what you should prepare before getting started.

1. How It Works

Syndicast works as a marketplace for radio shows, giving licensed radio stations a simple way to discover, evaluate and subscribe to programmes for their schedules.

Once your show is live on Syndicast, it becomes available to radio stations across our network through their dashboard. Programme directors can listen to the show, review its details and decide whether it is suitable for their station.

For a station to start broadcasting your show, two things need to happen:

1. They need to like the show and feel that it fits their station.
2. They need to have an available slot in their schedule.

If a station wants to carry your show, it must first subscribe to it through Syndicast. During the subscription process, the station provides its planned broadcast day, time and timezone. It must also provide a direct link to its website or social media where the show and its broadcast information can be seen.

Once the station submits the subscription, both you and the Syndicast team are notified. We manually review every subscription to make sure the required information has been provided and the show is visibly listed by the station.

Once everything is confirmed, the station is approved and receives access to your episodes.

Subscribed stations can download episodes in the available audio formats through the platform. Automated FTP delivery is also available, allowing new episodes to be delivered directly to a station’s server.

Whenever a new episode becomes available on its publishing day, subscribed stations are notified by email so they know the latest episode is ready for broadcast.

Online radio stations are often the first to subscribe to new shows because their schedules are generally more flexible and they can make programming changes more frequently. FM and DAB stations usually have tighter schedules and may only make significant programming changes a few times a year, so new opportunities can take longer to open up.

Syndication takes time and consistency matters. We continually promote shows to programme directors through the Syndicast platform, promotional placements and partner communications. However, every radio station makes its own programming decisions, and the final decision about what it broadcasts always remains with the station.

2. Requirements

Before setting up your syndication, your show must be reviewed by our team.

There are several requirements that are important both for professional radio broadcasting and for giving your show the best possible chance of being picked up by stations.

Some of the main requirements are:

• The show must follow a regular and reliable release schedule, whether weekly, fortnightly or monthly.
• The programme must be station neutral. It must not contain station IDs, specific station names, broadcast dates or broadcast times.
• The show must contain jingles, show IDs, sweepers and/or voice overs so listeners can identify what they are hearing. Ideally, a branded element should appear every 5 to 8 minutes.
• Episodes must be either 60 or 120 minutes long, preferably approximately 59 or 119 minutes.
• Audio must be professionally mastered and suitable for broadcast.

You can find the complete requirements here.

If you have not yet submitted your show for review, you can do so here:

Send my show for review

3. Required assets

You will need the following materials before setting up your show for syndication:

• General artwork and episode artwork: Square artwork between 2000 × 2000 px and 3000 × 3000 px, with a maximum file size of 5 MB.
• One complete episode: Professionally mastered and supplied as a 320 kbps MP3 without embedded artwork or metadata. You can find the full audio requirements here.
• Radio show description: A clear and professional description explaining what the show is about and what makes it distinctive. You can read the description requirements here.
• Press pack: A .zip file containing the promotional materials radio stations may need, including editable show artwork, presenter or host information, photos, biography, website and social media links. You can find the press pack guide here.

You can find all syndication requirements here.

4. Minimum term

The minimum syndication term is six months.

Building a radio network around a show takes time. Programme directors need time to discover and evaluate the programme, and even stations that want to carry it may need to wait for a suitable slot to become available.

Consistency is also important for the stations that subscribe. When a station adds your show to its schedule, it is making a commitment to its listeners and building the programme into its weekly or monthly output. Ending a show shortly after stations begin broadcasting it can damage that relationship and make stations less willing to support the programme or the brand behind it in the future.

For this reason, radio syndication should be treated as an ongoing process rather than a short campaign.

5. Exclusivity

We recommend giving radio stations a short period of exclusivity before making each episode publicly available elsewhere.

Many stations prefer to broadcast a new episode before it becomes available on platforms such as Mixcloud, SoundCloud or podcast directories.

You can therefore delay publication to other platforms for a few days after the episode has been delivered to radio stations.

This gives your radio partners additional value and helps maintain a stronger relationship between the show and the stations broadcasting it.

6. Syndication type

Before you begin uploading your show, decide how you would like it to be distributed.

You can use Syndicast for Radio Show Syndication, making your programme available to licensed radio stations through the network.

If you also want your episodes distributed to podcast directories and streaming platforms, you can add Podcast Hosting as a paid add on.

This allows the same show to build a presence across radio while also being available to listeners through podcast and streaming platforms.

7. Transfer your radio stations

If you already have radio stations broadcasting your show, you can bring those existing partners into Syndicast.

Once they are integrated into the platform, Syndicast can handle episode delivery to those stations and include them in your show statistics alongside stations gained through the Syndicast network.

This allows you to manage and track your wider syndication network in one place instead of maintaining separate delivery systems.

If you have understood the requirements above, you are ready to start setting up your show.

We have prepared step by step guides to help you through the setup process. If you need assistance, select the appropriate option below.