How do I add or create a new podcast on my website?
You've created a new podcast series and need to get it up on your site. This is the article to help you do just that.
You will need to create the podcast's taxonomy in the Taxonomy Manager.
There are some good reasons why you may want to consider adding your podcasts to a third-party service like iTunes, Soundcloud, or Stitcher. Learn more: How do I offer podcasts on my website?
Add the new podcast series name within your Taxonomy Manager.
Under Editorial on your dashboard, select Taxonomy and then Categories.
Chose which folder you want this to live under or select one that already exists.
Click on Add Taxonomy
Give it a title, description, external idea and image (required for iTunes).
Optional (required for iTunes): Add an image for the podcast
NOTE: when uploading your podcast RSS feed to iTunes, please be aware of their additional requirements. You can view the entire requirements list here: https://podcasters.apple.com/support/
iTunes Images: Podcast feeds contain artwork that is a minimum size of 1400 x 1400 pixels and a maximum size of 3000 x 3000 pixels, 72 dpi, in JPEG or PNG format with appropriate file extensions (.jpg, .png), and in the RGB colorspace. To optimize images for mobile devices, Apple recommends compressing your image files.
Click on Browse to go to the Media Manager to find or upload the podcast's promotional image. Learn how to add new images: How do I upload new media such as photos, videos and files?
Optional (required for iTunes): Add an iTunes Category Tag to your podcast RSS
NOTE: when uploading your podcast RSS feed to iTunes, please be aware of their additional requirements. You can view the requirements here: https://podcasters.apple.com/support/
iTunes Categories: Podcast feeds must contain a category tag so that iTunes knows how to classify your podcast (Arts, Education, Business for example).
You can set this by creating the following Editorial Content area:
podcast.itunes.####.categories
The #### above should be replaced by the value of the podcast's taxonomy ID from Taxonomy Manager.
The value for the tag should be placed in the Body field of the Editorial Content.
You can find more information on category values here: https://podcasters.apple.com/support/1691-apple-podcasts-categories
If you are looking to apply a category that's a child of one of the main categories that Apple accepts or to apply multiple categories, that is possible as well. In the EC, you would simply add your values like any in the following example:
Parent: Child, Child
Parent:Child,Child
Parent
Parent:Child
Parent
Note that if you do add spaces after the colon or comma, they will be stripped out when we generate the RSS.
Optional (required for iTunes): Add an iTunes Explicit Tag to your podcast RSS
NOTE: when uploading your podcast RSS feed to iTunes, please be aware of their additional requirements. You can view the entire requirements list here: https://podcasters.apple.com/support/891-content-and-subscription-guidelines
iTunes Categories: Podcast feeds must contain an explicit tag so that iTunes knows whether or not your content is appropriate for minors.
You can set this by creating the following Editorial Content area:
podcast.itunes.####.explicit
The #### above should be replaced by the value of the podcast's taxonomy ID from Taxonomy Manager.
The value for the tag should be placed in the Body field of the Editorial Content.
Values for the explicit tag are true or false based on whether or not your content is explicit (true) or not explicit (false)
If you would like to assign that taxonomy to a podcast episode, return to the Media Manager for an uploaded audio file and select the new topic/category. This is required when submitting to iTunes.
How do I add episodes to a podcast?
The following article takes you to the next step: How do I add a podcast to my site?
If you have any questions, please talk to your project manager.
TESTING ON ITUNES
Before submitting your podcast to iTunes, you can test it first. Read the test documentation here:
https://podcasters.apple.com/support/828-test-your-podcast
Validating your Podcast for iTunes and Spotify
Before submitting your podcast to iTunes or Spotify, you should validate it using the Feed Validation Service from W3c:
https://validator.w3.org/feed/check.cgi
Submitting your Podcast URL to iTunes and Spotify
When submitting your podcast to iTunes or Spotify, ensure that you are using the canonical URL for the podcast.
If you use a URL like this example:
https://www.domain.com/media/podcasts/1234.rss
It will not be accepted as the URL does not match the `atom:link` URL (which is required by these services).
Therefore, you should use the full canonical URL, like so:
https://www.domain.com/media/podcasts/1234-my-awesome-podcast.rss
Common Problems (and Solutions)
Problem:
When submitting to iTunes you receive the message "There is no category tag in your feed, or the category tag is empty."
Solution:
Categories are assigned to podcasts using an editorial content area in admin. (For a list of approved categories from Apple see https://podcasters.apple.com/support/1691-apple-podcasts-categories
For example, if you wanted to categorize the podcast under Business News, you'd make the EC body look like this:
Business: Business News
So if the podcast taxonomy is 123 then the EC name is podcast.itunes.123.categories, and it contains text in the format "Top-level Category: Subcategory".
Explicit tags are set using a similar EC - podcast.itunes.123.explicit. It can have one of 3 possible values: "yes", "no", or "clean". The latter indicates that the podcast is a censored or redacted version of a separate, explicit podcast.