June28

How To Prepare Your Podcast RSS for iTunes

I know, I know. I said I wasn't going to post on here anymore. But I really wanted to get this post up because it's an important one. I just updated the RSS feed for American Copywriter – in hopes that it will update our iTunes page for us – and it was a small, and sort of tedious, process. For those of you who want to get your podcast into iTunes (because it now supports podcasts), then here's how you do it.

First Step is to get your RSS feed all prepared for iTunes. In addition to all of the tags that you should be using (see RSS 2.0 specs), Apple has introduced many iTunes-specific tags to help populate their podcasting directory. Why they couldn't just leverage the standard RSS tags is beyond me. You can either follow all the super detailed specs from this pdf, or just take notes about the new tags below.

Channel-specific tags:

• Author :: who made the podcast

  <itunes:author>Seth Gunderson<itunes:author>

• Subtitle :: summarization of the podcast, limited to 255 characters

  <itunes:subtitle>Short description goes here<itunes:subtitle>

• Summary :: description of the podcast, limited to 4000 characters, who needs that many words?
  

  <itunes:summary>Long description goes here<itunes:summary>

• Owner :: who's the person responsible for this
  

  <itunes:owner>
    <itunes:name>Seth Gunderson<itunes:name>
    <itunes:email>email@email.com<itunes:email>
  <itunes:owner>

• Image :: Make sure you have an image, unless you want the default iTunes podcasting graphic. Images need to be 72dpi, JPG or PNG (uncompressed), 170x170 minimum height and width and 300x300 maximum height and width.
  

  <itunes:link rel="image" type="video/jpeg" href="url of image">
  Name of Podcast<itunes:link>

• Category :: Where you want your podcast to show up in iTunes' Podcast Directory. This can include sub-categories. You can also have multiple Top- and Sub-level categories, but iTunes will use the first listed Top-level as your primary category.
  

  <itunes:category text="Arts & Entertainment">
    <itunes:category text="Entertainment"/>
  <itunes:category>

• Explicit :: Does the podcast have bad words in it?
  

  <itunes:explicit>yes (or no)<itunes:explicit>

• Block :: If you want to block your podcast from iTunes. I would only use this if you do want your stuff blocked. No reason to include it to say no.
  

  <itunes:block>yes<itunes:block>

Item-specific tags:

• Duration :: How long is the podcast. Works in the HH:MM:SS (hours, minutes seconds). If it's not an hour long, simply follow MM:SS.
  

  <itunes:duration>32:28</itunes:duration>

• Keywords :: Put in some keywords for when users search on iTunes. Spaces separate words, no quotes. Limit of 255 characters.
  

  <itunes:keywords>Mike Tyson Tom Cruise Branding</itunes:keywords>

• The Author, Subtitle, Summary, Owner, Category, Explicit and Block tags all work for list items, as well.

That's about all there is to it. In the RSS for American Copywriter (please don't subscribe to that, it's our Feedburner xml file), you can see how I separated the iTunes tags from everything else. Not that you have to do that, it was just easier to read and cleaner that way.

Second Step, go into the iTunes Publish a Podcast Screen and submit your RSS feed.

That should about do it. Good luck.

+ original post date: June 28, 2005 03:33 PM
+ categories: Web Stuff