iTunes is "having difficulty downloading podcasts from your feed"

Question

iTunes is "having difficulty downloading podcasts from your feed"

I set up a podcast called Political Theory through wordpress. I uploaded originally through archive.org (https://archive.org/details/1stAmendmentFinal_201506), then linked that to a wordpress blog (https://politicaltheorypodcast.wordpress.com/) and then put the rss feed into feed burner. Then I put the feedburner link (http://feeds.feedburner.com/Politicaltheorypodcast) into the place on iTunes where you can submit links for podcasts, and iTunes told me it was "having difficulty downloading podcasts from your feed". I have no clue what I did wrong. I simply followed the instructions of the internet and various blogs and am not sure what to do in order to remedy this problem. Could somebody please help me? Thanks!

Posted on Jun 18, 2015 2:36 PM

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Answer 1

Jun 18, 2015 2:53 PM in response to cole1324873294

This isn't a podcast feed: it lacks the 'enclosure' tags containing the URLs of your media files as required by iTunes. Looking at the top episode, you have a reference in your 'content:encoded' tag (which iTunes does not read) to an archive.org embedded player - this won't work. You must provide a direct URL to the media file, which in this case would be

http://archive.org/download/1stAmendmentFinal_201506/1st%20Amendment%20Final.mp3

(The URL given in the right sidebar on the associated archive.org page for the MP3 version begins with https but you should amend it to http).

This error is probably why Wordpress has not created a proper podcast feed, because you haven't provided it with a valid URL, but you may also find this WordPress instructional page on podcasting helpful:https://en.support.wordpress.com/audio/podcasting/

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Answer 2

Jun 18, 2015 5:14 PM in response to Roger Wilmut1

First off, thank you so much for helping. I'm not seeing where you got that link from. The link I inserted into the wordpress blog came from the archive site. There was an option for sharing the audio file on the archive site and one of the things provided a link for embedding in wordpress blogs ([archiveorg 1stAmendmentFinal_201506 width=640 height=30 frameborder=0 webkitallowfullscreen=true mozallowfullscreen=true] is what it provides). So I inserted that in. Where should I get the link (for future podcasts) and where did you get that direct URL? Thanks!

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Answer 3

Jun 18, 2015 11:40 PM in response to cole1324873294

The archive.org page for your top episode is at

https://archive.org/details/1stAmendmentFinal_201506

On the right of that page you will see the block in this screenshot. Control-click (Mac) or right-click (Windows) where shown and copy the URL. This is the URL you need to insert in the feed, though you should change the https to http. Embedded players won't work.

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