Filed under: Audio, iTS, How-tos, iTunes, Podcasting
How To Publish Your Podcast to the iTMS
iTunes 4.9 is out and it places the world of podcasting at everyone's fingertips. This will be a little bit of an in-depth walk through of how to publish your own podcast(s) to the iTMS. Since we don't have an RSS feed for our podcast set up as of yet here at TUAW, I'll use my blog's podcast, the Sample the Web Podcast, as an example (though I don't actually recommend anyone listen to it, because right now it is just a test post using AudioBlog.com; since I dialed in the 'podcast' from my phone, there are some odd sound artifacts that make me sound like I have a very strong lisp; I don't).In any case, the good news is that all of this, as with most things done by Apple, has been done well so that the entire process takes only a modicum of work from you. Read on after the jump to find out how to publish your podcast to the iTMS....
Make sure you have a podcast with its own RSS feed. This How-to isn't about setting up a podcast, so Google it if you don't know how.- Make sure you have downloaded and installed iTunes 4.9.
- Launch iTunes and click on the iTMS link.
- At the top left menu of the iTMS you will notice a link to "Publish a Podcast." Click on that link (pictured to the right).
- A page that looks like the one below will come up. In the field in the middle of the page, enter the RSS feed address of your podcast and click submit:
- A dialog box will pop up asking you to log in to your iTMS account. Why? Well my guess is that this is just in case you upload something you shouldn't, like copyrighted work owned by another. On the main page of each podcast there is a link where you can "Report a Concern..." about the current podcast. Here's a screenshot of the screen where you can rat out any copyright infringers:
Now that you have been warned and know yourself to be non-copyright-infringing, put in your iTMS account username and password and click on through the dialog. - After you have submitted this information, you will be presented with a review page:
You can categorize your podcast here. You will also see all the associated metadata embedded in your feed. As you can see, I am missing most of this info; however, I cannot edit this in iTunes. I have to actually change the info in my feed to fix this, and since my feed is auto-created by audioblog, I'll have to see if I can tinker with those settings. - After you choose your category and check the Explicit Content box, if necessary, then click submit again. You will be met with this screen:
Notice that your podcast may be reviewed before it is posted. - That's it your done. Now the waiting begins. I submitted my podcast several hours ago and it still hasn't appeared. I'm curious about the criteria used in the review process...
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Brian Niles said 12:47PM on 6-28-2005
I'm curious to know how to add the "album cover art" to a feed. I thought I did it right using the tag in the rss code, but iTunes didn't pick it up.
Any one I have any ideas on how to do this?
Reply
Hadley Stern said 12:53PM on 6-28-2005
Brian, there is a pdf that Apple supplies on the support page on how to do this, basically you need to add some iTunes specific tags to your RSS feed. I was very happy to see that Reply
Hadley Stern said 1:17PM on 6-28-2005
Brian, there is a pdf that Apple supplies on the support page on how to do this, basically you need to add some iTunes specific tags to your RSS feed. I was very happy to see that Reply
Tony Roberto Zorzi Silva said 11:05PM on 6-28-2005
i loved the podcasts in itunes ,... anyone knows how to publish an online radio in itunes ???? i use nicecast to stream .. i need any help.. please
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Henry Phillips said 3:57AM on 6-29-2005
Hadley, do you (or does anyone else) have a direct link for the details on those iTunes-specific tags? Please post!
Reply
DanGina said 1:54PM on 7-02-2005
I added the album art tags to my rss feed and it doesn't register. My code is valid rss 2.0, but I'm not sure if its "itunes valid".
It also appears that itunes is caching the rss for the podcast description pages because changes aren't immediately available. This is a bad thing because it makes error correction much harder and slower to be fixed.
For some reason, after I updated my rss feed to be more itunes friendly, it now lists most of my shows twice. :(
Weird.
I would like to see Apple provide an iTunes validator and more podcaster management tools to immediately update the listings.
Reply
cristian contini said 5:33AM on 7-03-2005
Very strange... trying to publish my podcast, but i receive a 5002 error and a message Like " Itunes Musica Store error, try later:::" any cues? my feed is a feedburner one... http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/pMzc
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Justin said 12:34PM on 7-03-2005
I, too, have submitted my podcast and have yet to see the results in iTunes. Can you provide an update when you find yours? I'm wondering about the selection criteria, as well.
It's been about three days for me, though. I wonder if they need to see a new podcast before they jump on the feed and add it. Or, I'm sure a human is reviewing these right now as they are surely working out their system bugs.
Reply
Tinley, London said 9:03AM on 7-09-2005
I have followed all the instructions here and been to several other sites to write an RSS script for my MP3 files. Despite putting the correct iTunes tags into the script - I was unable to get the code to validate at http://rss.scripting.com/ so had to take the iTunes stuff out. I have authored my stream with an image see: feed://www.funnymachine.com/greenford/CoBMc128.xml and feed://www.funnymachine.com/greenford/CoBMc24.xml - but certain aspects of the RSS/XML just don't work the same on each feed - despite the text being identical except for the link to the actual streams...
Waiting for it to come up in iTunes - I posted it to the UK site, so assume it will turn up there?
Hope this helps people and if anyone has any ideas why some of my links work in one feed and not in the other???
Reply
Tinley, London said 9:02AM on 7-09-2005
I have followed all the instructions here and been to several other sites to write an RSS script for my MP3 files. Despite putting the correct iTunes tags into the script - I was unable to get the code to validate at http://rss.scripting.com/ so had to take the iTunes stuff out. I have authored my stream with an image see: feed://www.funnymachine.com/greenford/CoBMc128.xml and feed://www.funnymachine.com/greenford/CoBMc24.xml - but certain aspects of the RSS/XML just don't work the same on each feed - despite the text being identical except for the link to the actual streams...
Waiting for it to come up in iTunes - I posted it to the UK site, so assume it will turn up there?
Hope this helps people and if anyone has any ideas why some of my links work in one feed and not in the other???
Reply