My podcasts appear to download to iPhone, but when you try to play, each track appears to start playing but then moves on to the next track before you hear anything. Had this complaint from multiple users who have no problem playing other podcasts. Mine is hosted on soundcloud (Conversation Earth). Another podcast I host on soundcloud works fine. All the tracks have download enabled on both.
I can't check on an iPhone, but if you post the Store page URLs of both podcasts (make it clear which one works for you and which doesn't) I will see whether examination of the evidence on a Mac throws anything up.
Thanks, Roger. Here is one I am publishing that seems to work fine on iPhone: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-overpopulation-podcast/id1038456636?mt=2 &ign-mpt=uo%3D4
Here is the one that appears not to be playing on iPhone:
https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/conversation-earth/id1036514013?mt=2
There is no difference between the two. CastFeedValidator reports that byte range requests are working in both cases. Terminal shows that a 301 redirect is in place in both cases, followed by a 302 redirect - all this redirection isn't a good idea. However, both have downloads enabled in SoundCloud, so that when you enter the media file URL in a browser it downloads rather than playing. This has been known to cause problems in the past, and strictly you should disable this, but it doesn't seem to be an issue now - I could play the top episode from both direct from the Store.
As I say I can't check this on an iPhone; your next move should be to ask in the iPhone forum and get someone to check that they see the same problem. If they do I can only suggest contacting SoundCloud.
Thank you. Will do as you advise, but I am unclear about the redirects. Why/how would those be happening? All I did was submit the soundcloud feed for each of these to iTunes? Also, if I disable downloads in SoundCloud, won't that make it so no one anywhere can download these? They'll only be able to stream the podcasts?
It was the case recently that forced downloads would prevent episodes from playing in the iTunes Store. This may no longer be the case. Subscribers will download the episodes in the usual way even with downloading turned off. I can't answer for people who access the file through Soundcloud rather than iTunes.
As to the redirects, this is the result of testing for byte range requests in Terminal (301 is a permanent redirect, 302 a temporary one. You would have to take this up with Soundcloud, though as it's the same in both cases I don't see it being the problem):
curl -I -r 200-300 http://feeds.soundcloud.com/stream/246518423-conversation-earth-reinvent-the-eco nomy-gus-speth-118.mp3
HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently
Date: Mon, 26 Sep 2016 21:11:14 GMT
Server: am/2
Content-Length: 0
curl -I -r 200-300 http://feeds-tmp.soundcloud.com/stream/246518423-conversation-earth-reinvent-the -economy-gus-speth-118.mp3
HTTP/1.1 302 Found
Cache-Control: no-cache
Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8
Date: Mon, 26 Sep 2016 21:11:35 GMT
Server: am/2
Status: 302 Found
Content-Length: 228
My podcasts don't play on iPhone
