Recently in iTunes Podcasting Category

I'm always looking for more audio sound effects - especially free ones. Beatsuite.com has a collection of Royalty Free and free as in no cost audio samples designed specifically for podcasters. Terms of use are simply that you need to credit Beatsuite.com for providing them. As far as I can tell, the collection is available only on Apple's download site and the files are listed as requiring Mac OS X, but fear not, the WAV files in the download will work just as easily for Linux and Windows users too. The list of included sounds in the Royalty Free Podcast Promo Soundpack include:

Cafe Quarter Sting
Energize Sting
Night Metropolis Sting
Urban Tribe Sting
Constellations Loop
Eko Loop
Sci High Loop
Wave Movement Loop

While this isn't a massive collection of free loops, some is always better than none.

Royalty Free Podcast Promo Soundpack

For other free and royalty free sounds, be sure to check out Meanrabbit Sound Effects and The Freesound Project.

Beyond the specific <channel> tags within the <itunes:x> tag collection, some of the tags are optimized for assigning more information to individual episodes of your podcast. These tags are placed inside the <item> and </item> tags for each entry listed in your RSS 2.0 feed. Depending on which software app you use for publishing a podcast, these may be handled automatically or you may need to manually add them to each item. At the moment, making a modification to WordPress and Movable Type RSS 2.0 templates is the easiest way to add these tags to your feed. Hosting services like LibSyn are handling many of these configuration issues automatically, which is a massive value-add for anyone paying for their service.

<itunes:author>Name of Podcast or Your Name</itunes:author>
<itunes:subtitle>255 char summary of episode</itunes:subtitle>
<itunes:summary>4000 character show notes of podcast</itunes:summary>
<itunes:explicit>no</itunes:explicit>
<itunes:keywords>Keyword1 Keyword2 Keyword3 Keyword4</itunes:keywords>
<itunes:category text="Category">
<itunes:category text="Subcategory" />
</itunes:category>

The individual <itunes:x> tags making up the iTunes RSS 2.0 specification don't add value unless implemented correctly. After verifying proper linkage to the Document Type Definition (DTD) it's time to place the within your feed. Some of the tags are meant specifically for the <channel> section of your feed. These tags are placed somewhere after the opening <channel> reference and prior to the <item> reference within the feed.

As a group this collection of tags looks like this:

<itunes:author>Name of Your Podcast</itunes:author>
<itunes:subtitle>Subtitle of Your Podcast 255 character max</itunes:subtitle>
<itunes:summary> Description of your podcast goes here. </itunes:summary>
<itunes:owner>
<itunes:name>Name of Your Podcast</itunes:name>
<itunes:email>youremail@yourdomain.com</itunes:email>
</itunes:owner>
<itunes:category text="Category">
<itunes:category text="Subcategory" />
</itunes:category>
<itunes:image href="http://yourdomain.com/yourimage.jpg" />
<itunes:explicit>no</itunes:explicit>

Once you understand how all the iTunes tags fit into the big picture of your RSS feed, it's time to implement them within your feed. Some of these tags are specific to the <channel> section of your RSS 2.0 feed and some are specific to individual <iten>. In order for any of these additions to work, you must designate a link to the Document Type Definition (DTD) for the iTunes namespace changes. In a standard RSS 2.0 feed, the namespace definition looks like this:

<rss version="2.0" xmlns:blogChannel="http://backend.userland.com/blogChannelModule">

This tells aggregators to interpret your feed as an RSS 2.0 document and display it accordingly. Adding the iTunes DTD for podcasting requires you to include a second xmlns: tag within the rss definition space like this:

<rss version="2.0" xmlns:blogChannel="http://backend.userland.com/blogChannelModule" xmlns:itunes="http://www.itunes.com/DTDs/Podcast-1.0.dtd">

Make sure you do not define rss twice like the example below because this will break some aggregators:

<rss version="2.0" xmlns:blogChannel="http://backend.userland.com/blogChannelModule">
<rss version="2.0" xmlns:itunes="http://www.itunes.com/DTDs/Podcast-1.0.dtd">

The iTunes Block tag is specifically designed to tell iTunes to ignore a particular post in your podcast feed. This might be particularly useful if your feed combines text only posts and posts containing audio enclosures, because the text only posts are useless in the context of iTunes RSS support. Another potential use for this tag is to exclude an episode that is intended for a select audience (say subscribers using iPodderX, for instance). The Block tag is entirely optional and should only be used in those cases where you don't want a post to show up in the iTunes Music Store. To implement the Block tag in your RSS 2.0 feed, include the following in the <item> for your post: <itunes:block />

Duration is the iTunes tag associated with the 'Time' component of each episode of your podcast. This tag is implemented at the item level, displaying a time value for each episode in the format HH:MM:SS. Since people have few details about your show when they encounter it for the first time, this tag provides information that may help a listener decide whether they have time to tune in for one of your episodes. While it won't hurt anything to leave this tag out, as Apple indicates duration is for informational purposes only, not having it listed displays a Not Available notice in the Time description in iTunes Music Store. After a subscriber downloads any episode from your podcast, the Time is based on the actual audio file header information. Display the Duration of your individual episode file like this: <itunes:duration>HH:MM:SS</itunes:duration>

The iTunes image tag is one of the few tags added by Apple with any substantial value over the base RSS 2.0 specification. The RSS image tag is limited to maximum dimensions of 144x400, which seems fairly non-standard and certainly doesn't match the square dimensions of the album art displayed in the iTunes Music Store. Maximum dimensions for the iTunes Image tag are 300x300. It's recommended to use the maximum. This is one tag you should definitely include to make sure your podcast is differentiated from the default image in iTunes. Supported file formats are JPG and PNG. Apple seems to have two different methods for linking their image tag. Both appear to be correct.

The first method for including an image is the standard:

<itunes:image>http://www.YourPodcastURL.com/YourImage.jpg</itunes:image>

A second method shown in Apple's example is using the <itunes:link> tag to imbed the image:

<itunes:link rel="image" type="video/jpeg" href="http://www.YourPodcastURL.com/YourImage.jpg"></itunes:link>

The iTunes Owner tag designates the name and email address of the person or persons associated with your podcast. The designation is broken into two separate tags, one for email and one for name. These are wrapped with the overall Owner designation. This is another of the many redundancies in the iTunes name space defined by Apple. In almost every case the email will be the same email used to designate <managingEditor> in RSS 2.0, which often specifies email and a name in parenthesis.

The correct format for the Owner tag is:

<itunes:owner>
<itunes:name>Your Name</itunes:name>
<itunes:email>youremail@yourdomain.com<itunes:email>
</itunes:owner>

In theory the iTunes Keywords tag improves search relevance when people search by topic rather than searching for the name of your podcast. So far, I haven't found that search functions in iTunes check for anything other than Title, Author and Description fields because the keywords I've injected don't deliver any results in a search. I'm hopeful this is a temporary oversight, because using keywords certainly lends itself to making the feed more meaningful considering we don't have mechanisms for searching inside the audio contents at the moment. Use this field to key on specific topics covered in your podcast to aid in search relevance. This tag is used for individual items in your podcast feed.

Based on these criteria, the Keywords tag will look like this:

<itunes:keywords>Keyword1 Keyword2 Keyword3 Keyword4</itunes:keywords>

The Author tag is either the name of your podcast or your name, depending on the type of theme for your show. If you are the sole host of the podcast or the star of the show, using your name makes sense. If you have a group effort, sticking with the name of the podcast keeps all the egos satisfied, while also branding the show as being a collective effort. The author tag is used both at the RSS channel level and at the item level. At the channel level, this is an all encompassing tag for the podcast as a whole. At the item level, author could be the same as the channel level author or it may designate a specific collaborator. Based on these criteria, the Author tag will look like this: <itunes:author>Your Name</itunes:author> Or this: <itunes:author>Name of Podcast</itunes:author>

The Summary tag is exactly that, a summary description of your podcast. This is the elevator speech iTunes Music Store visitors read before checking out your podcast or ignoring it for something more compelling, so make it count. This is the only iTunes custom RSS tag without a 255 character limit. Think about what you would say to convince someone in 15 seconds or less why your podcast is awesome and use that text for the summary. In many ways this is the same thing as the <description> element in an RSS 2.0 channel definition, so it's redundant but necessary.

Your summary might look something like this:

<itunes:summary> In every episode, the MediaBlab podcast covers consumer electronics tips and technology hacks. Learn about VoIP, HDTV, Digital Video and more.</itunes:summary>

The Subtitle tag is used in iTunes to provide a quick 255 character summary of your podcast underneath the title on it's information page in iTunes. This can be a clever phrase or a continuation of the theme defined in your name. In the case of podcasts with names longer than 255 characters, this might be a good place to extend your name so that iTunes doesn't inadvertently cut it off. This doesn't seem like a particularly useful tag on the surface, but it's part of the retro-fit Apple made to conform podcasting to the layout of the iTunes Music Store. This tag is used in two places in your feed, with two different uses. It appears in the channel definition as a subtitle for the podcast and it appears in the item definition and is used for the Description of individual episodes in iTunes Music Store. For a Movable Type generated feed, I use the <$MTEntryExcerpts$> definition to populate the item level Subtitle.

The Subtitle tag looks like this:

<itunes:subtitle>Subtitle of Your Podcast</itunes:subtitle>

Apple wants podcasts inside iTunes to put the digital equivalent of a parental advisory on podcasts with foul language or mature topics. While this is very subjective across cultures, it's presumed the benchmark for explicit content is based on the norms in the United States. While the feed for our show made it into the iTunes Podcasts listing without a clear definition this is one designation you may want to include. Apple hasn't made it mandatory for listing yet, but it is most definitely not in their optional tag list.

If you do use explicit content in your show, the tag for your feed looks like this:

<itunes:explicit>yes</itunes:explicit>

A nice wholesome podcast gets no label at all using this tag:

<itunes:explicit>no</itunes:explicit>

While the RSS 2.0 <category> tag may be populated with any text, Apple has a specific list of requirements for the <itunes:category> tag. Currently iTunes supports 19 categories, with a smaller subset of them supporting a specific list of subcategories. You may designate more than one subcategory where appropriate. These categorizations are used to determine the hierarchy within the iTunes Music Store Podcast Section, so it's important to pay attention to what is allowed. iTunes allows multiple top-level category definitions for the same podcast, but will default to the first one listed when cataloging the Podcast in the iTunes Music Store.

Within your RSS 2.0 feed, an iTunes category with two subcategories looks like this:

<itunes:category text="Technology">
<itunes:category text="Computers" />
<itunes:category text="News" />
</itunes:category>

Top level categories are listed in bold below with subcategories immediately following. If a category has no subcategories, the next top level category is listed.

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