When setting up your podcast, you’ll be asked to indicate whether it contains explicit content. This classification ensures your podcast reaches the appropriate audience. In addition, many podcast listening platforms, including Apple Podcasts and Spotify, require explicit content to be clearly marked to comply with their guidelines.
What qualifies as explicit content?
You should mark your podcast or specific episodes as explicit if they include:
- Strong language or profanity
- References to violence, physical or mental abuse
- References to sexual behavior
- Discriminatory language (e.g., hate speech or slurs)
- Content touching on age-sensitive or potentially offensive topics
Episode-level explicit tagging
- If only certain episodes contain explicit material, label those individually instead of marking the entire podcast as explicit.
- Even if your podcast is tagged as explicit, you should still mark individual episodes as explicit to comply with listening platform guidelines and accurately reflect the content of each episode.
Impact of the explicit label
- In some countries, explicit content is either disabled by default and requires users to opt in or entirely prohibited due to local content laws.
- Podcasts marked as explicit may not appear in search results or recommendations for users with content restrictions enabled.
Learn more