Has anyone been receiving this message when attempting to submit a Podcast to iTunes?
"It appears the feed has already been submitted"
I was experiencing this problem and it was annoying and aggravating the **** out of me. Even after attempting to rename my XML file, twice, iTunes was continually rejecting my feed.
Then I put my thinking cap on. If iTunes is rejecting my XML file, despite the fact that the file has a different name, then perhaps the cause of the rejection lies INSIDE the file rather than on its OUTSIDE name.
So what's the cause of the problem? The problem is that the iTunes subscription service is not only validating any submitted podcasts, but the iTunes subscription services is actually CATALOGING those iTunes tags into a database.
iTunes tags, inside the XML (RSS feed) file look like this:
<itunes:author>some name</itunes:author>
The subscription service is relying upon a database comparison algorithm to determine what iTunes tags are duplicates of ones that are currently attempting to be admitted. What the **** am I saying?
I'm saying that if you've already submitted a podcast, iTunes knows it because it has scanned your file, broken that file down and is holding onto it. If you attempt to resubmit that same file, iTunes doesn't really care what the file is named, but it does care about what content lies in between the iTunes tags. If you leave your XML file (your RSS feed) the way it is without altering the content of the iTunes tags (let's say you leave your name the same), then iTunes will reject your podcast submission if you've already submitted it.
Well, that begs the question - is iTunes scanning for specific tags and comparing only certain tags for subscription confirmation? I don't know. Personally, I altered these tags:
<itunes:author>xxx</itunes:author>
<itunes:name>xxx</itunes:name>
<itunes:summary>xxx<itunes:summary>
<itunes:keywords>xxx<itunes:keywords>
...and that did the trick.
I also renamed my XML file, but I think that I could have left the file with the original name and it would have been accepted anyway.
I realize that I'm delving into the XML file and that most people want to stay away from that. Having the ability to alter the original XML file, however, is a great advantage and I recommend that everyone look into accessing it. I've done some snooping around FeedBurner and I have yet to find any way to alter the XML file from there. If anyone has a suggestion, let me know and I can do whatever posting I can.
I recommend validating your XML file, first, before submitting it to iTunes. Visit
http://feedvalidator.org and submit your feed for validation. Just a hint - the iTunes Summary field cannot contain HTML and the iTunes Keyword field must contain words separated by spaces, NOT commas.
Please feel free to contact me at
joshua@joshuajeremiah.name if you have any questions. I will also post a broadcast on my audio journal describing this problem. Please feel free to subscribe to my audio journal using
XML, using
FeedBurner or by visiting my webpage, at
http://www.joshuajeremiah.name
