Adding new Podcast via RSS - getting Unable to parse RSS feed

This is my first podcast and I'm totally new to Apple Podcast connect and new to a lot of the process, but not the technology (XML / RSS etc). It is possible that Apple's got a glitch that is wider but my worry is that this is in fact that Apple made some change that is going to cause formerly acceptable buzzsprout feeds to fail to parse but tbuzzsprout thinks they're fine and points at apple and apple points back at them ad infinitum

Roger

I can tell for sure that I did it both with the lock field on and with it off and no change - I hope that helps provide extra info for others who might be having this - I don't ~think~ it's the on or off on the lock though I suppose maybe the presense of the optional tag is an issue?

I could hack up a manual rss file that removes that to see if they take it but don't really want to then have to back that out

SELF-Reply for update info:

Still no solution but I've run through three different folks at buzzsprout and got what I consider to be a very honest answer that frankly comforts me:

which reads (in part)

I am sorry this has been such a hassle. Apple changed everything about a week ago and we are working on our end to make sure everything still works correctly. A couple of things I will clarify...

1) The XML

error you are seeing is not related to this at all and will not affect the Apple listing. So no need to worry about that!

2) The other errors you are seeing are likely showing because the validator that you used out of date. Your feed looks good on our end.

So, I am "comforted" that buzzsprout is taking it seriously but also that yeah this is a case of "rearranging the furniture in the middle of the night and then tell folks who stub their toes that it's their fault for not knowing where stuff was"

It led me down an odd rabbit hole though: I was stuck on the outdated tag - I said well wait you put the itunes xml:namespace entry there maybe you pointed at an old entry - yes and no.. it turns out

it seems that

xmlns:itunes="http://www.itunes.com/dtds/podcast-1.0.dtd"

has not been a valid, publishe resource since like 2005 - it's just gone and according to the XML specs it doesn't need to be a valid link - XML namespaces seem to care more about using the link as a unique (within the doucment) identifier and if the spec is not published/reachable then any old <itunes:foo></itunes:foo> can go in there and still be valid - hence apparently some part of the validator I tried using https://validator.w3.org/feed/check.cgi Just must be apply ing their own best guess (outdated) as to what it means

I was told that the false/true values are current and that validator was using outdated ones that claimed that yes/no/clean were the values - sending me on a wild goose chase thinking buzzsprout was using the wrong values

TL:DR: "apple changed it and we're still figuring it out" is actually comforting in a strange way - it's "normal"

SELF UPDATE _ NEWS!!

Ok, after others mentioned they could submit I did again and it still failed - I reached out to buzzsprout support again

They told me that Apple MAY be choking on multiple categories - asked me to set only one category choice and try again

OK MOVEMENT!

The submit worked but like others there's no submit for review - not sure if they changed that or what - the show shows as draft - I went through the pages to update any settings (like declaring if ihave third party content or not) and saved but no review option and the show info is showing .. processing

Perhaps I need to let it sit a little not sure

but I wanted to update folks - if you chose multiple categories, try unsetting all but one main category and see if that works

SELF-UPDATE - Maybe resolved!!!

Last we visited Tananda's struggle, we had gotten the validation passed and the podcast showed on her apple connect dashboard as draft.. but there was no artwork, no show description and no episodes

and there was no "submit for review"

Today I logged in and the artwork, descriptions and episodes were there and the purple "Submit to Review" was there

I clicked it and got an error as the Frequency field had not auto populated (Not sure - my guess is this used to be optional or was one of the changes made - don't know - I let Buzzsprout (my host) know that Apple considers this info required now

I selected my choice (weekly) and hit the button

it says Published

not in review

Still unable to find it in the app, but THIS IS PROGRES

So this may be solved and I need to wait a day but may be there is more

If there is more I will update

I want to thank folks in this forum especialy Roger for the help and Im sorry I am so verbose here but I figure this may prove useful to others in the same spot:

SUMMARY

Apple rearranged bunches of stuff - it broke my validation - some of it was that my host was allowing multiple categories and apple wants only one, and some of it may be that apple was also having issues etc...

Once I got past validation it took another full day before the description, art and episodes showed in draft

I had to manually specify frequency and was able to sumbit

Hope that helps others

SIDE NOTE: to anyone using buzzsprout . I was realy afraid it might turn into them pointing fingers at apple and apple pointing fingers at them, but Buzzsprout support stuck with me - offered some suggestions and was very helpful...

~Tananda

Gratz! This was my experience too - you hit submit for review and it says published

what happened to me is it just kind of showed up on apple podcasts a couple hours ago

I am LIVE - my guess is this will happen for you too!

Good luck!

Thanks will try it

question: which host do you use - still not working for me - buzzsprout here