RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is one of the most durable technologies on the internet. Introduced in 1999, it became the foundational protocol for distributing content from websites to readers, aggregators, and podcast apps. Despite the rise of social media, algorithmic feeds, and app-based content delivery, RSS never went away. It became infrastructure: quiet, reliable, and embedded in virtually every content platform that exists.
95% of major publications still maintain an RSS feed. Every podcast on Apple Podcasts or Spotify distributes episodes via RSS. Every YouTube channel has an RSS feed. Every Substack and Beehiiv newsletter has one. Most government agencies and regulatory bodies publish RSS feeds for official announcements. Reddit subreddits have RSS feeds. GitHub publishes RSS feeds for repository releases.
The question was never whether RSS feeds existed — it was what to do with all of them. Reading them in a news aggregator requires time at a screen. ListenBrief converts them into audio, synthesizes them across sources, and delivers the output as an MP3 that plays during the windows that already exist in your morning.
What kinds of RSS feeds work with ListenBrief
ListenBrief accepts any standard RSS 2.0 or Atom feed. Here are the most common source types and how they translate into briefing content:
- News publications: The New York Times, Reuters, TechCrunch, The Verge, industry trade publications — all publish standard RSS feeds. Paste the feed URL and get a daily audio summary of their new articles.
- Blogs and Substack newsletters: Most Substack newsletters have RSS feeds at
https://[author].substack.com/feed. WordPress blogs default to/feed. Ghost blogs use/rss. These are high-signal sources that often contain analysis not found in mainstream news. - YouTube channels: Every YouTube channel has an RSS feed, though the URL format is less obvious. ListenBrief auto-detects YouTube channel feeds when you paste a channel URL. Video transcripts are processed rather than the video itself.
- Reddit subreddits: Every subreddit has an RSS feed at
https://www.reddit.com/r/[subreddit]/.rss. This provides a daily briefing on the top posts and discussions in a community — useful for tracking niche technical or professional communities. - GitHub releases: Repository release feeds at
https://github.com/[owner]/[repo]/releases.atomlet you track software releases across the tools you depend on. Relevant for developers tracking dependencies or competitive products. - Government and regulatory feeds: The Federal Register, SEC, FDA, and most regulatory agencies publish RSS feeds. These are essential sources for any business in a regulated industry.
- Podcast feeds: ListenBrief won't replay podcast episodes — it processes transcripts and summarizes the key insights, allowing you to track many podcast series by extracting their essential content rather than listening to each episode in full.
Bitcoin Briefing →
A sample briefing generated from Bitcoin and crypto RSS feeds, synthesized into one daily audio episode.
Finding RSS feeds: a practical guide
You don't need to know RSS to use ListenBrief — the source finder auto-detects feeds when you paste a website URL. But if you want to add feeds directly or understand how to find them manually:
Auto-detection (easiest): Paste any website URL into the ListenBrief source field. If the site publishes an RSS feed, ListenBrief will find it automatically. This works for most major publications, blogs, and news sites.
Common URL patterns to try manually:
[site.com]/feed— WordPress default[site.com]/rss— Ghost and many custom sites[site.com]/feed.xml— Common alternative[site.com]/atom.xml— Atom format (fully supported)https://[author].substack.com/feed— All Substack publicationshttps://www.reddit.com/r/[name]/.rss— All subreddits
Browser method: In Firefox, navigating to a site's RSS feed URL opens a preview. In Chrome, installing an RSS extension (like "RSS Feed Reader") adds an icon to the address bar when an RSS feed is detected on the current page.
Feed processing schedule and what to expect
ListenBrief checks your RSS feeds once per day, at approximately 5 AM UTC, before your briefing is generated. It collects all items published since the last check and processes them together. This means items that were published late the previous evening are included in your morning briefing.
If a source publishes multiple items between checks — a news site that published 8 articles yesterday — the AI identifies the most significant items for inclusion. On Power plan, deep intelligence mode can process higher volumes and perform cross-source analysis to identify themes across many items.
Items that were already included in a previous briefing are tracked and excluded from future briefings — you won't hear the same article covered twice.
See how YouTube sources are handled separately at YouTube summary podcast. For newsletter-specific setup, see AI newsletter to podcast. And if you want to combine many RSS sources into a completely custom editorial mix, custom podcast generator covers the full configuration options.
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