by Maxwell Payne

Created on: March 14, 2009

Subscribe to your favorite podcast quickly and easily.

So you've found a podcast you really enjoy and you want to get the latest episodes for your iPod or computer desktop. Whether the podcast you've found features your favorite music, covers a topic you are passionate about, or just plain entertains you; you want to keep coming back for more.

With thousands of podcast streams out there at any given time, finding the latest episode of your favorite podcasts manually can be a time consuming task.

Fortunately you can subscribe to many podcasts quickly, easily, and 100% free.

Ways to subscribe to podcasts:

Chances are you've already found the podcast(s) you like through a podcast directory or a site such as Podomatic, MySpace, or ReverbNation. Now all you need to do is get episodes downloaded automatically as they become available.

iTunes Podcasts:

By far the most popular way to subscribe to podcasts, iTunes Music Store gives you access to any podcast that is submitted to iTunes. iTunes automatically checks RSS feeds of all podcasts submitted and allows you to download the latest episodes on demand.

Plus through iTunes, you can click 'Subscribe' for the podcast you want and iTunes will download the latest episodes automatically to your computer and MP3 player. You can even customize the settings so that iTunes will automatically replace old episodes with new ones.

RSS Feeds:

All podcatchers (such as the one used by iTunes) rely on RSS feeds to retrieve the latest updates and episodes for podcasts. If you don't use iTunes, you can subscribe to the RSS feeds on the site that hosts your favorite podcast.

You can use various RSS readers to subscribe to and 'read' the RSS feed of your favorite podcasts. There are literally hundreds of readers out there made by everyone from Google and Yahoo down to individual developers.

E-mail lists:

If the podcast you want to subscribe to isn't on iTunes or doesn't offer an RSS subscription option you can still keep updated. Most podcast hosting sites offer the podcaster an e-mail client so that they can keep fans up to date. At the very least these e-mail lists will allow you to subscribe to the podcaster's e-mail list and get updates when new episodes are available.

Most podcasters will use RSS feeds and submit their podcasts to a wide range of sites including iTunes and Podcast Directory. These allow instant and automatic downloads of the newest episodes as they are posted.

Subscribe to podcasts to get the latest automatically on your computer and MP3 player.

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