Last updated: August 2026
Most branded podcasts do not fail. They stop. There is no meeting where anyone decides to end it. Episode six goes out, the next guest never gets booked, a quarter passes, and the feed sits there with a cover image that still says season one.
The reasons are boring, predictable, and almost none of them are about audio quality.
Nobody owns guest booking. The first five guests are easy: colleagues, friendly clients, a partner who owed someone a favour. Guest six is real work, and if no single person's name sits against that job, it does not get done.
The host does not actually enjoy it. The host is usually assigned rather than volunteered. Interviewing people well for an hour is a specific pleasure. If the host does not have it, you can hear it by episode four.
There is no distribution plan. Podcast apps do not push your show at strangers. Sharing an episode once on LinkedIn is not distribution. It is an announcement.
The show has no reason to exist. A competitor launched one. A content plan had a line for it. Neither keeps anyone publishing once the novelty wears off.
You will find confident statistics online about the share of podcasts that quit by episode three. We are not quoting any, because every version we could trace came from podcast industry marketing rather than a checkable source. The pattern is real. The number is not.
This guide gives you a test for whether to start at all, then the practical detail: format, cadence, recording, editing, distribution and cost. Our figures start at around AED 750 to edit an audio episode and AED 2,500 for a full-service one. We produce media for UAE businesses from our Dubai and Bengaluru teams [15].
The test: should your company start a podcast?
Start a podcast only if you can name the host, the guest booker, the distribution route, and the reason the show exists. Answer these out loud, with names rather than intentions.
- Who is in the host chair every two weeks for the next six months? A person, not a department. If the answer is the marketing team, there is no host.
- Does that person enjoy talking to strangers for an hour? Spotify's creator guidance tells you to pick the format that gives you energy [1]. Energy is what listeners hear first and what runs out first.
- Who books guests past number five? Write out thirty names you would genuinely want to hear from. If reaching thirty is a struggle, an interview show is the wrong shape for you.
- Where does someone who has never heard of you encounter this show? If the answer is on Spotify, that is not an answer.
- What does this show say that an article or a short video could not say faster and cheaper? Sometimes the honest answer is nothing.
- What is the show for? Sales conversations, recruitment, partner relationships, or category authority. Pick one and you will know what a good episode looks like. Pick none and every episode is a guess.
The cheapest possible test: record three episodes and publish none. Getting three real conversations into diaries, recorded and edited, tells you more than any amount of planning. If it is a fight, you have your answer, and it cost almost nothing to find out.
Pick your podcast format before you buy anything
The four common podcast formats are interview, solo, panel and narrative, differing mostly in how much ongoing work they demand.
- Interview. The most popular and the hardest to sustain, because it needs a guest every episode forever.
- Solo. No guest problem, but it needs a host with something worth saying each time.
- Panel. Two or three regulars plus occasional visitors. It spreads the load and survives one person being on holiday, which makes it the most underrated option for a business show.
- Narrative. Scripted and produced rather than recorded. It sounds the best and costs the most.
Whichever you pick, plan in seasons. A season that ends on purpose is a finished project. A show that quietly stops is a public one.
Podcast cadence and episode length
Spotify's official creator guide says most successful podcasts start weekly, and that consistency matters more than raw frequency [1]. For a business show with one host and a guest pipeline, every two weeks is usually the honest cadence, and monthly beats weekly followed by silence.
Record ahead of publishing. A buffer of three or four finished episodes keeps the schedule alive through a busy quarter, and it is the main argument for batching.
On length, neither platform sets an ideal. Spotify's delivery specification puts its recommended maximum at around twelve hours [5], so the platform is not your constraint. Your audience is. A tight forty minute conversation beats a padded ninety minute one.
Where to record: office, podcast studio, or remote
Your own office works for audio only. A quiet room with soft furnishings, microphones close to each speaker, and the air conditioning off for the take gives you a clean recording. It is weaker for video, because ordinary offices have uneven light, a busy background and more echo than a treated room.
A studio buys you a controlled room and someone else's problem. It is the sensible choice for video and for batch days.
Remote recording works when each participant records locally on their own device and the tracks are synced later in the edit. That is far cleaner than recording one shared video call, but it adds a post-production step and depends on your guest following instructions.
Audio-only podcast or video podcast?
Choose video if new people need to find the show, and audio only if the audience is already yours. Video does cost more. Cameras, lighting, framing, and a multi-camera edit sit on top of everything an audio show needs. There is no reliable published multiplier for how much more, so we will not invent one.
What video buys you is clips, and clips are why most business podcasts get seen at all. If the audience is already yours, meaning clients and partners, audio only is a defensible start. If you need new people to find the show, video earns its cost.
Podcast editing, mixing and loudness targets
Loudness here is an average across the whole episode, not the loudest moment, and LUFS and LKFS are two names for effectively the same scale. Normalisation means the app adjusts playback volume towards a common level, so mastering very loud gains you nothing and can cost you quality.
The targets are well documented:
- Apple Podcasts asks for an integrated loudness of minus 16 dB LKFS with a tolerance of plus or minus 1 dB, and a true peak that does not exceed minus 1 dB FS, measured to the ITU-R BS.1770-5 standard [2].
- Spotify publishes a platform-wide normalisation target of minus 14 dB LUFS integrated, measured to the ITU 1770 standard, with true peak kept below minus 1 dB TP in mastering [3]. That guidance is published for music rather than specifically for podcasts, but it is the target Spotify normalises playback to.
Master to around minus 16 and both are happy. Spotify simply raises playback volume by roughly two decibels, which costs you nothing. Mastering hot for minus 14 is riskier, because it makes the true peak harder to hold below Apple's ceiling, and that is where distortion appears.
On formats, Apple accepts WAV, FLAC or MP3 through Podcasts Connect and MP3 or AAC through an RSS feed, with recommended MP3 bitrates of 96 to 128 kbps for mono and 128 to 256 kbps for stereo [2]. Spotify recommends MP3 at 128 kbps or higher, or MP4 using AAC-LC [5]. One well-mastered MP3 satisfies both.
Artwork, show notes and transcripts
Artwork is mandatory and has hard specifications. Apple requires square artwork of at least 1400 by 1400 pixels, prefers 3000 by 3000, accepts PNG or JPG, and does not allow transparency [4]. Spotify also requires a square image at the highest resolution available, listing TIFF, PNG and JPEG in that order of preference, [5]. Separately, Spotify recommends keeping consumer-facing metadata text, such as show and episode titles, to around twenty characters so it is not truncated in its apps [5]. Design the artwork for a small thumbnail on a phone.
Transcripts are optional but supported on both sides. Apple auto-generates them for English, French, Spanish and German shows on iOS and iPadOS 17.4 and later, and accepts your own VTT or SRT files instead [6]. Spotify supports transcripts through the open Podcasting 2.0 tag, with your upload or auto-generation, and distribution to other apps as an opt-in setting [7]. Show notes are the cheapest content you will ever produce, because the research is already done.
How a podcast actually reaches Apple Podcasts and Spotify
Neither app stores your episodes. Both read an RSS feed, a machine-readable file listing your show and every episode with a link to each audio file. Your hosting platform, the service that stores the audio, generates and updates that file each time you publish.
Apple's requirements are specific: valid RSS 2.0, served over HTTPS, publicly accessible and not password protected, with a correct XML declaration. Each episode needs an enclosure tag carrying the file URL, length and type, and a GUID that never changes once published. The servers holding your audio, artwork and feed must support HTTP HEAD and byte-range requests so apps can stream and scrub [8].
Submission is per platform. Hosting with Spotify for Creators generates the feed and publishes to Spotify only, and you still submit that same feed to Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music and anywhere else. Spotify also notes that once the feed is public, the contact email inside it becomes publicly visible, and content picked up by third-party directories cannot reliably be removed later [9]. Choose the host carefully.
The audio feed is not where your reach comes from
For a UAE business audience, the audio feed is rarely where the audience comes from. The clips are.
The reason is structural, not statistical. Apple Podcasts and Spotify are pull based: someone has to already follow you, or actively search, to encounter an episode. Nothing inside those apps surfaces your show to a person who has never heard of you. Instagram, TikTok, YouTube and LinkedIn work the opposite way, pushing content at people with no prior connection to you.
So a video podcast produces two assets from one recording: the episode, and short clips built for the system that actually reaches strangers. An audio-only show produces one and has no way into the second. That is the honest argument for video, and it needs no engagement statistic attached.
Treat the clips as a real deliverable: vertical, captioned, hook in the opening seconds. Our guide to social media video production in Dubai covers that craft, and influencer marketing in Dubai covers the guest-as-distribution angle, since a guest with an audience usually shares their own clip.
What the analytics actually tell you
Expect useful data and one permanent blind spot.
Spotify reports plays counted after thirty seconds, consumption time, followers, episode completion in the first seven days, week on week returning audience, whether people found the show through Home, Search or Library, device data, and CSV export [10].
The blind spot is that Spotify states its engagement analytics only cover people who listen to or watch your show on Spotify [10]. Apple reports on Apple only. Your host can count file requests across every app, but a request is not a confirmed listen, because podcast apps pre-download episodes nobody plays. A podcast never produces one clean audience figure the way a website does.
What podcast production costs in Dubai
Podcast production in Dubai starts from around AED 750 to edit an episode, from around AED 2,500 for a full-service episode, and from around AED 3,000 for a batch day. No credible published price list for podcast production exists in this market. No government body, regulator or platform publishes rates for creative work, and every Dubai figure online is a studio quoting itself. That is marketing, not a market rate. Here are our own numbers.
| What you need | Starts from (AED) |
|---|---|
| Editing an audio-only episode | 750 |
| A full-service episode (recording, editing, show notes, artwork, social clips) | 2,500 |
| A batch recording day covering several episodes | 3,000 |
Final pricing depends on scope and is confirmed after a short brief.
Batching is the single biggest cost lever. Setup and teardown cost the same whether you record one episode or five. Booking the room, rigging microphones, setting levels and packing it all away is a fixed cost for the day, so the fourth conversation costs very little more than the first. That AED 3,000 batch day is the same starting figure as the content day in our social media video production guide, and an ongoing podcast sits in the same band as the retainers in our content marketing cost guide.
What moves the price: episode length, number of speakers, whether the audio arrives clean or messy, video versus audio only, how many clips, music and sound design, and whether you need Arabic. Our video production cost guide covers the filming side.
Podcast licensing and permits in the UAE
The National Media Authority is the body now publishing these services, and the old UAE Media Council domain redirects to it. The Authority describes its role as regulating and licensing media activities and outlets, including digital media, in the country and inside media free zones alike [11]. It publishes e-services for commercial media licences and for individuals providing advertising or media content on digital platforms [12].
The honest position: we could not confirm from the National Media Authority whether a podcast requires a licence. Neither service page we could read names podcasting. We are not stating that a licence is required, we are not stating that one is not, and we are not publishing a fee. Every AED figure circulating online for a podcast licence traces back to business setup consultancies rather than the regulator. Federal legislation updating media service fees was issued in 2025 and is indexed on the UAE legislation portal [13], but the fee schedule itself was not readable. Confirm your own situation with the Authority before publishing commercially. We are a production team, not legal advisers.
On permits, a video podcast shot outside your own premises follows the same logic as any corporate video shoot, with crew, lighting and commercial intent. Our Dubai filming permit guide sets out that process and our event videography guide covers live formats. Whether audio-only recording with no camera sits inside the Dubai Film and TV Commission's scope is something we could not confirm from an official page, so do not assume either way. Ask the Commission directly [14] before you book.
Real client stories
These are real situations from work we have done. Names and details have been changed.
The founder who should not have started. A professional services firm wanted a podcast because two competitors had launched one. We ran the six questions with them. There was no host anyone was excited about, the guest list ran to seven names, and nobody could say where a new listener would come from. We recommended they not start, and put the same budget into a short video series instead. A year later they had no podcast and no regret.
The show that was already dead in the calendar. A logistics business had recorded four episodes and stalled. The audio was fine. Guest booking was assigned to nobody, so it fell to whoever remembered. We restructured it as a panel with two internal regulars, moved to one batch day a quarter, and put a named person in charge of the diary. Twelve episodes shipped the following year, recorded on four days.
The audio show that got seen once it had a camera. A consultancy had a decent audio-only interview show that almost nobody outside their existing list heard. We added a two-camera setup on batch days and started cutting short vertical clips. The episodes did not change. The audience did, because the clips reached people who had never heard of them.
How SKIMBOX approaches podcasts
We start by asking whether you should make one at all, because a show that stops is worse for a brand than a show that never started. If the answer is yes, we scope it as a production system rather than a one-off: a format that survives a holiday, a batch schedule that builds a buffer, an edit mastered to the loudness the platforms specify, artwork that meets requirements, show notes, and clips treated as a real deliverable. We produce audio only or video, in English, Arabic or both, and hand over finished files or handle publishing too. We run the parts that are a treadmill and leave you the guest relationships and the editorial line.
Editing an audio-only episode starts from around AED 750, a full-service episode from around AED 2,500, and a batch recording day from around AED 3,000. Final pricing depends on scope.
See our media production services and content marketing services, or contact us for an honest read on whether a podcast is right for you.
For related reading, see our guides on explainer video production in Dubai and filming permits in Dubai.
References
[1] Spotify for Creators - How to start a podcast, including format choice and publishing consistency. creators.spotify.com
[2] Apple Podcasts for Creators - Audio requirements, including loudness targets, true peak, accepted formats and bitrates. podcasters.apple.com/support/893-audio-requirements
[3] Spotify - Loudness normalization (published for artists; Spotify's platform-wide normalisation target), including the integrated loudness target and true peak recommendation. support.spotify.com/us/artists/article/loudness-normalization
[4] Apple Podcasts for Creators - Show cover template and artwork specification. podcasters.apple.com/support/5514-show-cover-template
[5] Spotify - Podcast Delivery Specification, including audio format, maximum episode duration, image requirements and metadata rules. support.spotify.com/us/creators/article/podcast-specification-doc
[6] Apple Podcasts for Creators - Transcripts on Apple Podcasts. podcasters.apple.com/support/5316-transcripts-on-apple-podcasts
[7] Spotify - Managing episode transcripts on Spotify. support.spotify.com/us/creators/article/managing-episode-transcripts-on-spotify
[8] Apple Podcasts for Creators - Podcast RSS feed requirements. podcasters.apple.com/support/823-podcast-requirements
[9] Spotify - Your RSS feed, including hosting, distribution to other platforms, and feed visibility. support.spotify.com/us/creators/article/your-rss-feed
[10] Spotify - Understanding your podcast analytics, including the stated limitation to Spotify listeners. support.spotify.com/za-en/podcasters/article/understanding-your-podcast-analytics
[11] National Media Authority, UAE - FAQ on regulatory scope, including digital media and media free zones. nma.gov.ae/en/faq
[12] National Media Authority, UAE - Media licensing and digital content permit e-services. nma.gov.ae/en/services
[13] UAE Legislation Portal - Federal legislation on media service fees (existence only; fee schedule not accessible). uaelegislation.gov.ae
[14] Dubai Film and TV Commission - Dubai filming and media production permits. filmdubai.gov.ae
[15] SKIMBOX - Internal experience producing media for UAE businesses, 2026. skimbox.co
