Networks

A podcast network is a group of podcasts that share hosts, content, and mutually promote one-another. Pinecast has built-in tools for creating and managing podcast networks. These tools are available for customers with the Crew Add-on.

Each podcast may belong to zero or more networks. There is no limit on the number of networks that a podcast can belong to.

Network Features

Access sharing

Networks are created by an account with the Crew add-on. However, other Pinecast accounts can be added as members to the network. Network members can add their own shows to the network. All members of the network (including the network owner) have read/write access to all shows in the network.

An unlimited number of members and shows can be added to a network. Any kind of user (free or paid) may be added to a network.

While members of a network share read/write access to other network shows, only the owner of a show can perform certain sensitive actions (such as deleting the podcast or the podcast's website).

Combined analytics

The network overview shows a combined analytics dashboard for all of the shows in the network, allowing you to see analytics data that you'd otherwise see on each podcast's dashboard combined into one set of charts (and in some cases, allowing you to filter and break out data by show).

More data about network analytics is available on the Analytics knowledge base article.

OPML feeds

On the Manage > Settings tab of your network, you can enable OPML feed support. This publishes an OPML feed, which lists the RSS feed of each podcast in your network. Listeners can use this feed to automatically subscribe to each podcast in bulk. This feature is not enabled by default.

Network Limits

Though networks provide an incredible amount of versatility to podcast management, there are a number of limits that are imposed on them.

• Features are only available on a podcast-by-podcast basis if they are available to the owner of the podcast. That is, a user with a Pro Analytics Add-on cannot view geographic analytics for a network podcast that is owned by a user with a Starter plan.

• Only the owner of a network may deactivate the network.

• Podcasts within a network may be edited by any member of the network, but only the owner of a podcast may delete it.

• Only the owner of a network or the owner of a podcast may remove that podcast from a network.

• Only the owner of a network may remove members from the network. Members may, however, remove themselves.

• Only the owner of a podcast may add their podcast to a network that they belong to. Network owners may not add others' podcasts to their network.

Access Control

If a user is removed from a network, all of the podcasts that they own are automatically removed from the network.

Because all members of a network have read/write access to all of the podcasts in a network, a network may not be appropriate for all collaboration setups. If you run a network but wish to keep member access limited to individual shows, consider instead using Collaborators (which are also included with the Crew add-on). Collaborators grant access to a single podcast to a single user, with the same read/write access that a network allows. Unlike a network, collaborator access does not extend beyond the shows that the collaborator has been explicitly granted access to.

You can use both networks and collaborators at the same time. You can add multiple shows to a network for a combined analytics dashboard. At the same time, rather than adding other Pinecast users as members of the network, they can instead by added as collaborators to the shows that you intend to give them access to (restricting their access to other shows in the network).

For more information, see our article on the differences between networks and collaborators.