Podcast RSS FAQ's

There are a variety of errors that iTunes can encounter when you submit your feed. Almost all of them can be avoided by testing your feed using the Advanced menu prior to submitting your feed.

In some cases, when you submit your feed URL, iTunes will respond by saying that the feed has already been submitted. There are two possible causes:

1. Someone has already submitted the same feed URL.
2. Someone has already submitted a feed with the same content in the <title> and <link> fields.

In either case, iTunes blocks your feed to avoid listing duplicate podcasts.

If the submission is blocked because the feed URL has already been submitted, and you are in control of the RSS feed, then you donÕt have a problem: your podcast is in iTunes and you can control it by editing your feed.

If you are the feed owner and the feed that is listed in iTunes is not under your control, you can attempt to contact the owner by finding the feed URL and examining the code for contact information. You can also contact iTunes by navigating to the podcasts page (where all of episodes for the podcast are listed) and selecting the Report a Concern link. In the Choose Reason list, select "is mine and I would like it removed from the Music Store" and provide a detailed explanation of the problem as well as contact information. See the Frequently Asked Questions page for how to determine the feed URL currently used by iTunes.

The Queue

After your podcast is submitted, it is placed in a queue, where iTunes staff check it for problems. Your podcast may be rejected for a variety of reasons, including but not limited to:

• Technical problems, usually the lack of episodes or the inability to download or play episodes. These problems can almost always be avoided by testing your feed using Subscribe to Podcast in the Advanced menu prior to submission.
• Strong prevalence of sexual content.
• Use of explicit language in the title or description of the podcast.
• Use of explicit language in the podcast when the tag is not set to Òyes".
• Apparent misuse of copyrighted material or other violation of third party rights.
• Inclusion of offensive material, such as racist content or child pornography.

In general, if thereÕs something that you want to convey about your feed, please do so in the summary field in your RSS feed, not in the content of an episode.

Normally, podcasts that are added to the iTunes directory will appear first in iTunes search, and later in iTunes browse. Appearing in the browse category that you specified can take up to two days. The image associated with your podcast may also require additional time to appear, because images are edge-cached by iTunes and must propagate across the caching servers.