Guide · Podcasts
How to get the transcriptof a Spotify podcast.
Spotify generates transcripts for many episodes, but as a listener you can only read them in the app: you can't copy or download the full text. Here is how to get the whole episode as text you can search, quote and keep.
What Spotify gives you
On episodes that have one, Spotify shows an auto-generated transcript in the Now Playing view of its mobile app. Not every show has transcripts, and the ones that exist are read-along only: a listener can share a short passage, but can't copy or download the full text.
Downloading is a creator feature. In Spotify for Creators, a show's owners can download the transcript of their own episode as a VTT file, edit it and upload it again. If the show is yours, that is the quickest route; for anyone else's show, read on.
Method 1: paste the episode link into a transcriber
Almost every podcast on Spotify is also published through a public RSS feed, the same feed Apple Podcasts and other apps read. Scribetape matches the Spotify link to that feed and transcribes the episode's audio, so you don't record or download anything yourself.
Limits worth knowing before you paste: without signing in you get the first 30 minutes as a preview, a free account covers episodes up to 72 minutes, and paid plans go up to 24 hours per recording. A longer episode comes back as a marked preview of its opening, which you can continue after choosing a plan that covers the rest.
- In Spotify, open the episode, tap Share and copy the link. It looks like open.spotify.com/episode/…
- Paste it into the box on the Spotify transcript page and press Transcribe. Tick Identify speakers first if it is an interview or a panel.
- Wait a few minutes. An hour-long episode usually takes two or three; you can close the tab and come back to the transcript's link.
- Search the text, copy it in one click, or download TXT, DOCX, SRT or VTT. Use PDF / Print to save a PDF.
Try it on an episode now.
Without signing in: the first 30 minutes. A free account: up to 72 minutes per recording, within your remaining credits. Longer recordings return a preview.
Compare plansmp3 · wav · m4a · flac · and more
Method 2: start from the audio file
If you already have the episode as a file, or the show's website links its MP3, you can skip the link matching: upload the file on the audio-to-text page, or paste the direct link to the audio. The free plan accepts uploads up to 300 MB, which is several hours of podcast audio at the usual bitrates.
The same works for Apple Podcasts: paste the episode's Apple Podcasts link and it is matched to the same public feed.
If the show is a Spotify exclusive
Some shows are published only on Spotify, without a public feed. Their audio is protected inside the Spotify app, so a link-based transcriber can't fetch it, and a tool that claims otherwise is either recording your playback or guessing.
What is left: if the show is yours, download the transcript from Spotify for Creators. If it isn't, check whether the show posts the same episodes on YouTube or on its own site, and transcribe that copy instead.
What to do with the transcript
Searching is the common case: find the line you half remember and jump to its timestamp. Quoting is the next one, and the timestamps tell you where to check the audio before you quote it. Signed in, you can also get a summary of the episode or translate the transcript into 16 languages, both of which use credits. For a video podcast or a clip, the SRT and VTT exports become a subtitle track.