Publish an episode

Every episode in Mato starts as a draft. Publishing makes it available to listeners. Distribution sends it to external platforms like Buzzsprout and the Mato podcast network. This guide covers the full flow from draft to distributed, plus how to take an episode back down.

Episode lifecycle states

Mato tracks each episode through three states:

The lifecycle badge appears in two places: next to the episode title on the detail page, and on each episode card in the episodes list.

Before you publish

Two things must be true before the Publish button becomes active:

1. Audio generation is complete. The episode's generation status (the small outline badge next to the lifecycle badge) should read "published," meaning audio rendering finished successfully.
2. An audio file exists. If the player section shows "No audio available yet," go back and generate or regenerate audio first.

The Publish button stays disabled until both conditions are met. You do not need to fill in every metadata field to publish, but adding a title, description, and cover image before publishing gives listeners a better first impression.

Publish your episode

Open the episode detail page and look at the header card. When the episode is in draft, you will see a Publish Episode button with a globe icon.

1. Click Publish Episode.
2. A confirmation dialog appears. It explains that publishing will make the episode visible to listeners.
3. Click Publish Episode again in the dialog to confirm.

Mato updates the lifecycle status to "published" and shows a green "Published" badge. If your podcast is synced to Mato Distribution, Mato automatically triggers distribution to the Mato CDN at the same time. You do not need to click a separate button for that.

If the automatic distribution trigger fails, Mato rolls the episode back to draft and shows an error message. Try publishing again, and if the problem persists, check your Mato Distribution sync status in podcast settings under the Publishing tab.

Distribute to Buzzsprout

After publishing, the episode detail page unlocks platform distribution buttons in the Audio section. The Buzzsprout button only appears if you have configured and validated a Buzzsprout connection in your podcast settings (under the Publishing tab).

1. Find the Publish to Buzzsprout button in the Audio section, next to the Regenerate Audio button.
2. Click it. A confirmation dialog describes what will be sent.
3. Click Publish in the dialog.

A progress modal opens to track the upload. Mato sends your audio file, title, description, and metadata to Buzzsprout through a background job. When the upload finishes, the button changes to a green "Published to Buzzsprout" label with a link icon you can click to view the episode on Buzzsprout.

If the upload fails, the button turns red and shows "Retry Publish to Buzzsprout." Click it to see the previous error message and try again.

Distribute to Mato

The Mato distribution button appears when your podcast is synced to Mato Distribution (configured in podcast settings under Publishing). In most cases, Mato automatically triggers this when you publish. But if auto-distribution did not fire, or if you need to retry, you can trigger it manually.

1. Find the Publish to Mato button in the Audio section.
2. Click it. A confirmation dialog appears.
3. Click Publish to start the upload.

The progress modal tracks the CDN upload. Once complete, the button changes to "Published to Mato" with a link to the hosted audio.

When an episode is successfully distributed to Mato CDN, its lifecycle badge changes from green "Published" to blue "Distributed."

Generate a WordPress article

If you have a validated WordPress connection in your podcast settings, an Article card appears on the episode overview page. This is separate from audio publishing. It generates a blog post from the episode script and sends it to WordPress.

1. Click Generate Article on the Article card.
2. Confirm in the dialog. The article is generated from the episode script using AI.
3. When complete, the button changes to "Article Generated" with a link to view it on WordPress.

You can regenerate the article at any time by clicking the edit icon next to the completed status.

Platform buttons and lifecycle requirements

The Buzzsprout, Mato, and embed buttons only appear after the episode is published or distributed. While an episode is in draft, the Audio section shows a note that platform distribution is disabled. Publish the episode first to unlock these controls.

Unpublish an episode

You can return a published or distributed episode to draft at any time.

1. On the episode detail page, find the lifecycle badge area in the header. Next to the green "Published" or blue "Distributed" badge, there is an Unpublish button with an eye-off icon.
2. Click Unpublish. A confirmation dialog appears.
3. If the episode is distributed, the dialog warns that unpublishing will also attempt to remove it from external platforms.
4. Click Unpublish to confirm.

Mato sets the lifecycle back to draft and clears the Mato distribution status. If the episode was published to Mato Distribution, Mato sends an unpublish request and regenerates the RSS feed to remove the episode. This Mato-side removal is best-effort. If it fails, the episode still returns to draft locally, and you may need to manually remove it from external platforms.

Unpublishing does not delete the episode, its audio, or its script. Everything stays in your workspace. You can republish at any time by clicking Publish Episode again.

Troubleshooting

If the Publish button is disabled, check that audio generation completed. Open the Audio section and confirm you see a working player.

If Buzzsprout publishing fails, open podcast settings and verify your Buzzsprout API key and podcast ID are correct under the Publishing tab. Click the validate button to re-test the connection.

If the lifecycle badge shows an unexpected state, refresh the page. Background jobs update the status asynchronously, so the badge may take a few seconds to reflect the latest state after a publish or distribute action.