Podcast chapters allow your listening audience to get extra context during your podcast, more easily take action, and jump to spots in your episodes. So are chapters right for your podcast?
I know there might be some immediate negative feelings about supporting something that could allow your audience to skip parts of your episodes, but please give me a chance to convince you why chapters can do more, but that even allowing skipping is a good thing.
1. What are podcast chapters?
A podcast chapter is a marker placed at a time within an episode. There are currently three technological standards for making podcast chapters:
- Embedded chapters stored inside the MP3 or other media file, often called “MP3 chapters” or “legacy chapters.” These have been supported by many popular podcast apps for many years.
- Podcasting 2.0 “cloud chapters” stored as JSON inside a separate metadata file linked from the RSS feed. Most Podcasting 2.0 apps support cloud chapters, and even Apple Podcasts will be supporting them.
- Podlove Simple Chapters stored as XML inside the podcast RSS feed. Oddly, Spotify chose to support this nearly dead standard instead of the other, more popular standards.
All three chapter standards support the same core functionality of what a chapter can do:
- Display a title
- Optionally display an image
- Optionally link to a URL
Podcasting 2.0's cloud chapters also add the ability to include a location and to hide a chapter from the table of contents so that it can't be jumped to and won't display in a chapter list.
I'll tell you more about what chapters can be further down. But for now, keep in mind that chapters are basically titles (or headlines), and optional images and/or links. And this information is placed at certain times in the episode so podcast apps will display that chapter's information when the playback reaches that point and until the chapter changes.
2. Answering the objection: chapters allow audiences to skip content
Yes, it's true that putting chapters in your episodes will allow your audience to skip content they don't want. They might skip points in your episode, they might skip whole segments, or they might skip ads, depending on how you use your chapters.
But that's not necessarily a bad thing!
Imagine you were looking for information and you found an article with five points. You realize the information you want is in the fourth point, but instead of letting you quickly scroll to get the information you need, the article forces you to view each point before the one you want. Not only that, but it forces you to read every word before then.
Frustrating, right?
Thankfully, that's not how (most) websites and browsers work! And it's not how your podcast episodes should work, either.
Yes, people might skip to what they want from your episode, but don't you want them to get what they want? Don't you especially want them to get it from you instead of being frustrating and looking elsewhere? (If you've follow me and The Audacity to Podcast for a while, you might recognize that this is the same argument I make for providing thorough “show notes” for each episode.)
Even if you have ads in your podcast, using chapters doesn't mean your ads become skippable. More on that in a moment!
3. The helpful benefit of chapters: context
In their simplest form of only titles, podcast chapters can provide your audience with an easy outline of your episode's content. It's similar to handouts you might get for a speech, lesson, or sermon. You can see the outline so you can follow along. Plus, it's often very convenient to have the extra context for that section simply by seeing the section's heading.
If you listen to this episode in a podcast app, you'll probably see each of my headings as chapters, so you would see that this section's chapter as “3. The greatest benefit of chapters: context.” Just from glancing at that alone, you can be reminded that I'm talking about context and action. It's also very similar to how much books—especially nonfiction—have chapter titles and sometimes even section titles at the top or bottom of each page.
Providing that context helps your audience follow along, better understand your content, and even remember it better.
And that's from only the chapter title! You could also include a picture in your chapter, allowing your audience to quickly see what you're talking about without their having to visit a website or your having to make a video podcast. In fact, they might not have to even unlock their smartphones to see the chapter title and image!
I did used titles, images, and links in my previous episode, “Podcasting During or After Tragedy.” I referenced two different movies in points 3 and 5 of that episode, and for those chapters, I included the section heading as the chapter title, an image from the movie's relevant scene, and even a link to that specific movie clip on YouTube. For some of my audience, they could simply glance at that image and immediately remember the scene.
But they could also quickly open the relevant link! And that leads onto my next point!
4. The most convenient benefit of chapters: actionability
(Yes, “actionability” is a real word, according to Merriam–Webster's dictionary!)
When you give a chapter a title and image, you're helping your audience with the information you're sharing. But when you add a link, you're making the information actionable!
From my testing, every podcast app that supports chapters also allows them to have images and links. How the links display varies a little, but most apps turn the chapter title into a hyperlink with the URL you included. So, yes, that means it might not always make the most sense for that text to be hyperlinked, but I have hopes and proposals for Podcasting 2.0 “super chapters” to make this better in the future. But more on that further down.
If you want your audience to take any action or be able to quickly access information, linking to it from a chapter makes that action extremely convenient because the listener doesn't have to go to your website and they don't even have to try scrolling through your episode notes inside their podcast app. They can usually tap right on that chapter while it's playing and be taken to that destination.
You're probably familiar with a URL, like https://theaudacitytopodcast.com, but chapters don't have to link only to webpages. They could be mailto links to trigger an email, they could be phone links to trigger a phone call, or SMS links like “click to text,” or links to any other kind of action that can be triggered from a URL pattern.
Imagine these potential actions:
- When you're talking about a favorite resource, you could add your affiliate link to the chapter so your audience can quickly buy it.
- When you're thanking your audience for their support, you could link the chapter to your support or value page so others can quickly give support, too.
- When you're doing a baked-in advertisement, you could link that chapter to the advertiser's site to make the call to action more convenient.
- When you're asking for feedback, you could link the chapter to your feedback page, or even directly to your email address or SMS number (like for Buzzsprout's “fanmail” feature).
Each one of these can be more actionable by linking to them from the chapter at the time when it's most relevant.
Just remember to support fallback options since it's possible some of your audience won't be able to take action on the chapter right then.
5. How to chapter your podcast episodes
Let's break chaptering into two steps: style and adding.
First, pick your chaptering style
I generally suggest that the easiest and best way to decide what chapters to make is by looking at how your content is naturally divided. If your content has any kind of outline, as most of my episodes do, those are your chapters right there! And if your content has multiple segments, different stories (news or comedy), or “scene changes,” those are also ideal to be their own chapters.
There will be times you'll have to consider how deep your chapters should go. For example, we're now in a second level of headings, but I've chosen to give both A and B subheadings their own chapters.
You might also run into a case where you have a single section but you want to share multiple images or links. Until “super chapters” are accepted in Podcasting 2.0, the best thing you could do is link to a single page with those links, or to the relevant section of a page with targets. For example, adding #section-title-here to a URL (usually before any question mark or ampersands) can link to a section of that page that uses the title attribute for that link or heading.
You could even use an AI/LLM-powered tool to suggest chapters for you.
Second, add your chapters with the right tools
There are multiple tools to add chapters to podcast episodes. Some hosting providers, such as Blubrry, Captivate, Buzzsprout, RSS.com, and some others offer built-in tools to add your chapters. There are also some installable apps that can add chapters to your MP3 files, like Forecast for macOS, Podcast Chapters for macOS, and Hindenburg for Windows and macOS.
The hosting providers often offer AI-powered (or more technically correct LLM-powered) chapter suggestions where the system looks at your episode transcript and tries to suggest chapters for you. But in my experience, the results are often too granular, resulting in too many chapters. And such systems often ignore the outline you actually have.
The installable apps offer more manual control, sometimes letting you place a marker in the audio waveform while listening to the episode, and sometimes offering only a timestamp field for completely manual entry.
As you can tell, each of these have their shortcomings—potentially time-sucking dealbreakers! And that's why I finally decided to create something better. So I'm thrilled to announce the public launch of PodChapters™!
After using I think every popular chapter-adding tool out there, I'm quite certain PodChapters is the fastest, easiest, and smartest way to chapter your podcast!
If you want, you can manually place your chapters in the audio waveform. But even that manual approach is easier than other apps!
But where PodChapters really excels is when you use the AI-powered features. You can either provide your own transcript or use PodChapters to transcribe your podcast for you (and with some really smart features!). Then, the AI can suggest chapters for you, even automatically placing them. I've tweaked the AI a whole lot to get great results with all my tests, and that's been confirmed by my beta-testers! From there, you can easily edit the chapters to your liking.
And something no one else offers, but that I have suggested and requested for years, is the amazing ability to take the outline you provide and automatically turn that into chapters for you and with amazing precision! For example, since I always know what I want my chapters to be—my outline—I simply paste that outline into PodChapters and click a button for it to place my chapters, saving me all kinds of time and frustration!
For real, this was the workflow I or my assistant Steve Mudie would have to do for every episode:
- Transcribe with MacWhisper Pro
- ID3-tag with ID3 editor
- Add chapters with Podcast Chapters (macOS-only)
- Export the transcript and Podcasting 2.0 chapters and upload them to a CDN
- Finally add the transcript and Podcasting 2.0 chapters URLs inside PowerPress
Now, everything but adding the links to my feed can be done in one tool: PodChapters! And yes, that means PodChapters can even host your transcript and Podcasting 2.0 chapters for you!
PodChapters really does provide everything you need to add engaging chapters to your podcast, potentially in as little as 30 seconds (from some of my own real-life tests)!
I made PodChapters first for myself, and then I realized how much time and frustration it could save you, especially if you're on Windows or Linux where there are very few options for making chapters. PodChapters runs in the browser, so it works on any modern device! (Yes, it even works on an iPhone, though I know I need to optimize the interface more for small-screen devices.)
Start chaptering your podcast the smart way with PodChapters! NOW AVAILABLE!
6. Podcasting 2.0 “cloud chapters” are already better
At its core, Podcasting 2.0 “cloud chapters” do the same things as legacy chapters: title, optional image, and optional link. 2.0 chapters do also add the ability to include a location and hide the chapter from the table of contents, but those are for very specific uses.
Beyond that, simply by moving the chapters out of the RSS feed and especially out of the MP3 files enables some really cool things! For example, you could replace a chapter image to reflect more urgency as some deadline approaches. You could replace the URL destination of a chapter. Or you could completely change what the chapters are! And this is all done by editing the tiny episode metadata file (sometimes called a “chapters file”) without editing the MP3! And your listeners in a Podcasting 2.0 app will have access to the chapters without having to redownload your episode!
Here are some more resources to learn about Podcasting 2.0 chapters:
- The official Podcasting 2.0 spec
- “Let's Look at Podcast Chapters” from The Future of Podcasting
- “Chapters” from Podcasting 2.0 in Practice
7. Podcasting 2.0 could bring “super chapters”
Chapters are one of my favorite features of Podcasting 2.0, and so I've proposed some ways they could be so much better than the legacy functionality they still are: title, optional image, and optional link.
The two biggest things I've proposed are galleries and text blocks.
Consider a podcaster who wants to share a bunch of images from a relevant trip. She could tell her audience to visit her website to view all the images, or she could painstakingly make a chapter for each image. But then that forces the audience to see the images at the pace of the chapters, which would likely require interrupting the podcast multiple times. That's where a gallery chapter could come in.
A single chapter could contain all the images from the trip. There would be just the one chapter as the host is talking about her trip, but the audience could swipe through the gallery of images at their own pace while listening and without leaving the podcast app.
Text-block chapters would allow a chapter to have more text than only a title. It could contain bullet points, a quotation, or multiple links.
Here are some other podcast episodes where I've talked about chapters and what “super chapters” could be in the future:
- “Super Chapters in Plain English” from The Future of Podcasting
- “Chapters” from Podcasting 2.0 in Practice
Special thanks
- Steve Wilkinson sent 1,234§, saying, “Thanks for all you do for podcasting!”
Thanks to YOU for signing up to use PodChapters!
If you love The Audacity to Podcast and value the podcasting inspiration and education I provide, would you please consider giving back what it's worth to you?
Supercharge your podcast engagement and grow your podcast!
Do you ever feel like your podcast is stuck? Like you're pouring your heart into your podcast but it seems like no one is listening?
Try Podgagement to help you supercharge your podcast endgagement!
Get speakable pages to simplify engaging with your audience, accept voicemail feedback (with automatic transcripts), see and share your ratings and reviews from nearly 200 places, follow your podcast rankings across nearly 34,000 global charts, discover networking opportunities, and more!
Ask your questions or share your feedback
- Comment on the episode
- Send a written or voicemail message here
Follow The Audacity to Podcast
- Apple Podcasts, Spotify, other Android apps, or in your favorite podcast app.
- Subscribe on YouTube for Podcasting Videos by The Audacity to Podcast
- Follow @theDanielJLewis on X-Twitter
Disclosure
This post may contain links to products or services with which I have an affiliate relationship. I may receive compensation from your actions through such links. However, I don't let that corrupt my perspective and I don't recommend only affiliates.
Related Content
