"We had difficulty downloading episodes from your feed."

What is your feed?

Looking at your top episode as an example: the URL given for the media file is

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/CavinDebates/~5/ZZu94NA8V24/ckxu3kq71t4z5l5g2cee

This redirects to

https://www.box.com/s/ckxu3kq71t4z5l5g2cee

which is a web page containing an embedded player. This will not work in iTunes: you must provide a direct URL to the media file, and the URL must include the extension, e.g. .mp3. The test is that when you enter the URL in Safari the file plays in Safari in an otherwise empty page. Links which download the file, or which take you to a web page where the file can be played, won't work.

The problem with hosting your audio files on free hosting services is that they have to make a profit somehow, usually by adding adverts to customers' webpages. They are likely not to want to host audio files directly, and more likely to provide the sort of in-page player you've been using. They are also likely to impose bandwidth limits - if you podcast gets popular that can mount up.

You would be better off looking for a reasonably priced service which provides straightforward website hosting; one caveat is that it must be capable of handling 'byte-range requests' (the method used by iPhones, whereby a part of the file is requested at a time, rather than the whole thing) - this is mandatory and your podcast won't be accepted if your server doesn't handle this. You should check with any service about this before committing yourself.

I checked your top episode: the Feedproxy URL redirects to a Dropbox URL. Dropbox is no use for hosting episodes for a podcast as it doesn't handle byte-range requests, and the https:// protocol can cause problems. Furthermore the URL:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/bxvjtho8qlzfoyd/04%20Did%20Jesus%20Rise%20from%20the%2 0Dead_%20Pt.%202.mp3

leads to a page with a download link. None of this will work; you need to host your files on an ordinary website server, and as I said you need to check before committing yourself that it will handle byte range requests.

Your filenames have spaces in them: spaces are not allowed in a URL and though the code %20 has correctly been substituted you should avoid doing this. The usual workaround is to substitute an underscore for each space.

Before attempting to submit your feed to the Store you should check that it works by subscribing to it manually in iTunes (from the File menu in v11, or the Advanced menu in earlier versions). At present you will see that it does not work. Only when it works there is it worth submitting to the Store.

I am having the same error "We are having difficult in downloading eppisode".

Can anyine help me out ?????

My rss feed page is http://dev.youareaceo.com/rss_sounds.php

Your is not a podcast feed. It has no 'enclosure' tags containing the URLs of playable media - indeed you have no playable media at all. Your 'link' tags go to web pages with embedded players - this will do you no good in iTunes.

Please read my 'get you started' page on podcasting:

http://rfwilmut.net/pc

Includes a sample basic feed - I'm not suggesting you should hand-write your feed, but it will give you an idea of what a feed should look like, and the page contains other information you should find useful.

Hi. I am also getting this same error. I checked my rss feed in iTunes prior to submitting, and it successfully downloaded three episodes. Yet I still get the error.

Here is my feed: http://fairvoteaction.org/?feed=rss2

What error? The one about difficulty downloading your media files? I can't see any plain reason for this - as you say the feed can be subscribed to in iTunes and the three episodes which have playable media appear, and the top one downloaded OK. The files can be played in a browser. Also your server does handle 'byte range requests' as required by Apple.

The only thing which occurs to me (and this is a pure guess) is that your URL contains dots in the date:

http://www.fairvote.org/assets/03.25.2013-Jerome-Gray.mp3

This doesn't confuse browsers but possibly the Store thinks the extension is beginning at the first dot. You could try remaning the files using hyphens in the date - obviously change the feed to match.

Thanks for the prompt reply, Roger!

The error is "We had difficulty downloading episodes from your feed."

I tried changing the file name of the mp3 to replace the dots with dashes (you can check the rss feed to see it now: it's the Jerome Gray one). I still get the error. So... any other ideas as to what could be going on here?

Your WordPress-generated feed doesn't have the 'iTunes declaration' at the top:

<rss xmlns:itunes="http://www.itunes.com/dtds/podcast-1.0.dtd" version="2.0">

and has no 'itunes:...' tags. This doesn't stop it being subscribable-to and I wouldn't have thought it would have prevented submission, but I suppose it might (even though the 'enclosure' tags work anyway). However without the tags you can't have an image in the Store and you will lack the subtitle and summary tags.

This is because WordPress is in effect producing a weblog feed and not a proper podcast feed, at least one suitable for iTunes. It is possible to use WordPress to include the correct 'itunes' tags and declaration, but I can't advise on how you go about this, or whether you need a plugin.

Thanks! I'll look into it.

Roger,

I am having similar issues with iTunes having difficulty downloading episodes from my feed.

My feed is http://feeds.feedburner.com/AfterRealityTvPodcast

Any help is appreciated