Podcast I created will not play or download

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Podcast I created will not play or download

Hello,

The podcast I recently created - "Parkinson's Podcast - Recover Mobility with Matt Zepelin" - shows up in iTunes, and it updates the episodes as I update them on my Squarespace website: http://www.recovermobility.com/feldenkraisboulder/

When I click "play" on an episode, however, the little circle just goes round and round, and does not play. Likewise, when I hit "get," it appears to download but does not show up in my iTunes or elsewhere that I can find. I'm sure there's something simple I'm missing here, but I don't know what steps to take. Neither my website nor the podcast page are password protected.

Thanks very much for your help -

Best,

Matt Zepelin

MacBook (13-inch Mid 2010), OS X Yosemite (10.10.2)

Posted on May 25, 2015 4:41 PM

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Answer 1

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Roger Wilmut1

Level 10

131,158 points

May 25, 2015 11:33 PM in response to MZepelin

I can't advise unless you would like to post the URL of your iTunes Store page. The Squarespace website doesn't tell me anything useful.

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Answer 2

MZepelin Author

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May 26, 2015 1:41 PM in response to Roger Wilmut1

Hi Roger,

Thanks so much for your time helping me out! Here is the URL I found going through iTunes on the web:

https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/parkinsons-podcast-recover/id995428528?mt=2& ign-mpt=uo%3D4

And here is what I get when I control-click and hit "copy link" from the title of it in the iTunes on my computer:

https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/parkinsons-podcast-recover/id995428528?mt=2

In both cases, the episodes will play (after a delay, on the first episode I attempt to play, no delay on subsequent episodes). But when I try to play them through my own iTunes program on my computer, the circle around the 'play/stop' button just goes round and round, and it does not play even if I wait for many minutes.

Thanks again -

Matt Zepelin

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Answer 3

May 26, 2015 2:03 PM in response to MZepelin

Basically, the server appears not to be responding properly to requests from the iTunes Application or the iTunes Store (within iTunes).

I checked your top episode's media file. It plays OK when you enter its URL in a browser; and it plays in the web page version of the iTunes Store which you first meet using the second URL in your post.

It won't play in the iTunes Store within iTunes; and when subscribing it downloaded about half the file and then gave up.

I can't give you an explanation for this, though I've seen cases before where a server will respond to a browser but not to the iTunes Store and sometimes to the application as well. You'd have to take this up with SquareSpace. Incidentally I also checked the URL in Terminal, and got unusual results which for one thing suggest that the server does not handle 'byte range requests' - this is the method used by iPhones but isn't relevant to my other tests, however handling this is mandatory for a podcast to be accepted (which suggests that it did when you submitted the podcast, unless of course you've changed the server for the media files since).

You may want to think about hosting your episodes on another server - and ordinary web server will do provided it handles byte range requests and can cope with the bandwidth demands.

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