Podcasting #3: iTunes

Posted on 04 Sep 2008 21:40:43 by John Slater

Introduction
This is more of a tutorial rather than an article however it's very important to your Podcast's success and your success. iTunes will be around 60% of your visitors, this is speaking from personal experience, my podcast I was launched I used to get around 50 listeners, the same week that the new iTunes was released my listener stats went up by more than 200%. Then the following month when I checked I saw that my listeners almost always used iTunes. As you can tell its important that iTunes is housing your feed.

Brag Brag Brag
Also before I move on I will brag around a bit. Within 2 months of my podcast launching I was in the top 50 in the UK and Ireland iTunes chart, at 6 months I was in the top 10. In a matter of weeks I was at 3 rd place and only 1 place behind Mr Chris Moyles of Radio 1. I beat Chris Evans and Terry Wogan in the chart, this was before podcasts were as big as now, and now the iTunes chart is full of commercial podcasts by movie companies and radio stations which is disappointing for people who have good podcasts.

The difference
The difference between iTunes enabled podcasts and a normal podcast are the tags. However this does not mean you need 2 separate feeds, you can merge the tags into a normal podcast feed. iTunes uses different tags because some tags are not standard in an normal podcast feed. And iTunes know that because they have the majority of podcast listeners using their software they can do what they like.

iTunes ask for little tags like "subtitles" and "keywords" these are not standard in RSS so iTunes needed to add an extra tag to the XML.

All iTunes tags are defined like so: <itunes:…> as you can see iTunes is the prefix of the tag, this is just to make all the RSS valid.

Getting Started
Rather than me explaining each tag individually and expect you to put them together. I will give you a template and let you change the data, much easier. I will then explain the tags and what they are for.

Download Template

The Tags The channel
<itunes:category text="Technology"> - This is the category tag, now before you rush off and put in your category please note that iTunes has presets, you cannot freelance with this and must stick to their list.

<itunes:category text="Tech News" /> - This the subcategory, as you can see from the list above iTunes has some subcategories, put them in here, if your feed's category doesn't have a subcategory then delete this tag.

<itunes:explicit> - iTunes like to warn people about feeds that may contain inappropriate content such as bad language and sexual content, if your podcast does then enter “yes” between the tag, if not then add “no”. If itunes find your feed, which they do, they will send you an e-mail asking you to, if you don't they will delete your podcast.

<itunes:summary> - This is a description of your feed.

<itunes:subtitle> - This is a good place for a tag line, or more descriptive title.

<itunes:author> - This is just who created the podcast, if I had created it I would add "John Slater"

<itunes:email> - Enter your e-mail address between, make sure it exists because iTunes send you an verification e-mail.

<itunes:name> - You can either put your name between this or your companies name. If it was me I would put JCWEB between them.

<itunes:image href=" " /> - You need to put your album art image into your feed, simple add the website address to your album art. If you do not have album art then create one, it distinguishes your feed from the other, so make it stand out. Recommended size is 500x500.

Within the item
<itunes:explicit> - If a specific podcast has swearing or sexual content in it then make sure you select yes, this means you don't have to say all of your feeds have bad language in them.

<itunes:keywords> - This tag is for you to put keywords that relate to the podcast, add around 10.

<itunes:author> - Who created the podcast? Add it here, this will most likely be the main author, but sometimes isn't.

<itunes:subtitle> - This is the subtitle for the podcast, good place to add a tag line or more specific title.

Finishing up
Now you know the tags for iTunes podcasts you can grasp the power of the iTunes listeners. iTunes tech support have help over at their site.