My podcast is tagged as explicit but showing as clean in iTunes

You have set the 'itunes:explicit' tag to 'yes' for the overall podcast, but your episode has the 'itunes:explicit' tag set to 'no'. You must flag each episode where it contains explicit themes or language.

You have constructed your podcast in Wordpress, and someone was complaining only a couple of days ago that he was unable to flag his episode using Wordpress (and that they told him it had to be done in the file's ID3 tag, which is rubbish). However the last I heard was that Wordpress had agreed there was a problem at their end (see the last post in the thread) so possibly you may find you can do this.

You need to do this with some despatch, because I have to warn you that having an episode containing explicit language but not flagged as such (irrespective of the overall flag) is grounds for your podcast being removed from the Store, so you should try to get this corrected before the Store staff notice.

iTunes does not read the ID3 tags. You have to have the 'itunes:explicit' tag in the feed for each episode where it's required. What they are suggesting you do is a waste of time. I suggest you look into Blubrry Powerpress.

Short answer:

If you want to make sure everyone gets your new mp3:

1. Remove the episode from your feed (Unpublish the Wordpress post)
2. Add a new episode to your feed (Create a new Wordpress post with your new mp3 file)
3. Publish your feed (publish the Wordpress episode)
4. In 24 hours, the iTunes Store, iTunes Desktop and the Podcasts app will see the new episode and download the new mp3.

if I replace the mp3 with another file with the same name, does what's in iTunes change?

Long answer:

The iTunes Store displays the title, duration, date, description and subtitle about your podcast episode. All this information comes from your podcast feed.

The mp3 file isn't "touched" until someone clicks download, subscribes or clicks play.

Nothing would change in the iTunes Store, iTunes Desktop or the Podcasts app...until:

• Apple Store (not subscribed): When someone clicks play, the iTunes Store will begin playing the [new] mp3 file.
• Apple Store (not subscribed): When someone clicks "get", the iTunes Store will download the new mp3 file into My Podcasts.
• iTunes Desktop (subscribed): If the subscriber already received the old mp3 file and it was downloaded into iTunes desktop's My Podcasts, iTunes desktop will not check for a new mp3 file.
• iTunes Desktop (new subscriber): If someone subscribes to your feed after you changed the mp3 file, iTunes desktop will retrieve the new mp3 when episodes get downloaded.
• Podcasts app: Same as iTunes desktop.

Does that help?

-Fan

Shawngordo has posted a response in another thread about the same 'itunes:explicit' problem in Wordpress, which isn't encouraging - it's on page 2 of this thread:

Episodes marked as clean

Apparently as things stand at the present you simply cannot add this tag. This is ridiculous, and makes wordpress.com completely unsuitable as a podcasting system. If you cannot insert the tag and continue to have strong language in your episodes you are liable to find your podcast removed from the Store, which is a highly unsatisfactory situation. If you able to remove the strong language it might well be advisable to do so.