It's possible to have a completely private podcast on ZenCast that only people you invite can listen to.
You may want to set something like this up for an internal company podcast, or for a private club or church group.
To switch your podcast to private, go to the Show Settings tab and scroll down to the Audience section:
Here you can use the drop-down menu to select between 3 different audience settings:
- Public - Public podcasts can be listened to by anyone, all new episodes created will be set to public. Any old episodes that were set to Private will not be updated to Public audience.
- Private - Private podcasts can only be listened to by people given access.
- Mixed - Mixed podcasts allow you to choose between Public and Private audience individually for each episode.
Once the show is set to Private or Mixed audience, a new tab "Members" will appear on your ZenCast dashboard:
To add someone to the list of permitted listeners, either manually add their email address using the "Add members" button:
Or, share the invite link with them directly (note, you need to click the red "Generate a new invite link" button first):
Members will be given the option to listen via several platforms that currently support private podcasts:
A couple of notes:
- Your podcast must have a Mixed or Public audience to use the ZenCast media player
- If an episode was previously set to Private and you change the show audience to Public, the episode will stay private as a precaution, and the option to change this will not be available on the Episode Settings page.
To fix this, temporarily switch the audience under Show Settings to "Mixed" and you will now have the ability to switch each episode from Private to Public under the Episode Settings tab. When you're finished you can switch the Show Settings back to Public Audience.
If anything here doesn't make sense or you have more questions, get in touch via the chat bubble or email hello@zencast.fm and we'll be happy to help.