A wholistic rss namespace for podcasting that is meant to synthesize the fragmented world of podcast namespaces. The broad goal is to create a single, compact, efficient
namespace that is easily extensible, community controlled/authored and addresses the needs of the independent podcast industry now and in the future.
There is significant overlap amongst the many existing podcast namespaces. Each platform and publisher has created their own namespace to give their respective
system and audience the metadata they need in the way they want it delivered.
The only required tags should be those that solve an overwhelming need in the industry. Requiring tags is a roadblock to adoption and should be avoided. Attributes
should also only be required when they are key to the functionality of the tag.
Reinventing the wheel helps nobody. When at all possible, existing conventions should be maintained. For example, it would make sense to turn **\<podcast:explicit>** into
a unary element, where it's existence is taken as a "yes" and it's absence as a "no". But, that has never been the standard. And, given as how this namespace will probably
sit alongside at least one other namespace, it makes sense to keep existing conventions in place.
There is no way to address every possible metadata point that each platform would want. That is not the aim. Instead we focus on defining the elements that would be useful
to the broadest set of apps, publishers, platforms and aggregators. Individual parties can keep their respective supplemental namespaces small and targeted as an adjunct to
this larger namespace. But, we don't want to be so general that the spec becomes overly complicated. A beautiful, "perfect" spec is not important. Solving real problems is.
Our guiding principles for development of this namespace are the "[Rules for Standards Makers](http://scripting.com/2017/05/09/rulesForStandardsmakers.html)" by Dave Winer.
Please read it before contributing if you aren't familiar with it.
There is an example feed [example.xml](example.xml) in this repository showing the podcastindex namespace side by side with the Apple itunes namespace. There is also
a "sandbox" feed where we experiment with tags while they are being hashed out.
The url for that feed is: [https://noagendaassets.com/enc/pc20sandbox.xml](https://noagendaassets.com/enc/pc20sandbox.xml).
this feed into a new platform should be rejected. It is expected that podcast hosting providers will enable a toggle in their GUI to allow their users to turn
The owner attribute is an email address that can be used to verify ownership of this feed during move and import operations. This could be a public email or a
virtual email address at the hosting provider that redirects to the owner's true email address. This is a critical element, and it's expected that podcast
hosting providers (if not providing virtual addresses) will allow setting this element's value in their GUI with an emphasis to their users of how important
it is to have this be a valid, working email address.
Links to an external file containing a transcript or closed captions file, which may actually be the same file. The mime type of the file should be given - such
as `text/plain`, `text/html`, `application/srt`, `application/json`. If there is no language attribute given, the linked file is assumed to be the same language that is
specified by the RSS \<language\> element. If the rel="captions" attribute is present, the linked file is considered to be a closed captions file, regardless of what the
Links to an external file (see example file) containing chapter data for the episode. The mime type of the file should be given - JSON prefered, `application/json`. See
the [jsonChapters.md](chapters/jsonChapters.md) file for a description of the chapter file syntax. And, see the [example.json](chapters/example.json) example file for
This element must contain, at minimum, a latlon point and a country code. Although, an OSM specification is highly recommended. The purpose of this tag is to allow specifying
locations relevant to this podcast or episode. It can be used as simply as a single tag in the channel to show the "home base" of where a podcast is produced. Or, more thoroughly
for a travel podcast to specify locations that were visited during each episode. Also, a history podcast could reference points of interest discussed. There are many possible uses.
- latlon: (required) A latitude/longitude point reflecting the location associated with this show or episode. This could be where it is made, or alternatively a location which
- osmid: (recommended) From the OpenStreetMap API. If a value is given for osmid it must contain both 'type' and 'id'.
- osm type: A one-character description of the type of OSM point. Valid is "N" (node); "W" (way); "R" (relation).
- osm id: The ID of the OpenStreetMap feature that is described. This may be a city or a building. While OSM IDs are not considered permanent, cities rarely disappear.
- CountryCode: (required) The ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 country code, eg 'US'. (Note that the United Kingdom is 'GB', not 'UK'.)
- Locality: (recommended) With a pipe separator from the countrycode, this is a humanly-readable place name as preferred by the podcast publisher.
This element specifies a person of interest to the podcast.
-`name` (required) This is the full name or alias of the person.
-`role` (optional) Used to identify what role the person has for the show or episode. Currently there are two defined roles: "host" or "guest". If role is missing then "host" is assumed.
-`img` (optional) This is the url of a picture or avatar of the person.
-`href` (optional) Link to a relevant resource of information about the person. (eg. website, blog or wiki entry).
This element allows for listing different contact methods for the podcast owner. This could be for general feedback, advertising inquiries, abuse reports, etc. Only one element of each "type"
This element is meant to provide alternate versions of an enclosure, such as low or high bitrate, or alternate formats or alternate uri schemes, like IPFS or live streaming. There may be multiple alternateEnclosure elements in an item, but there must be no more than one in a channel. The presence of this element at the channel level would be useful for adding a video/audio trailer or intro media that introduces the listener to the podcast. For instance, in a podcast of an audiobook, this could be the book's introduction or preface. The alternateEnclosure element always refers to an "alternate" media version. The standard RSS enclosure element is always the default media to be played.
-`url` (required) This is the url to the media asset.
This points to a group of images, separated by commas - each with a pixel width declared after them. It is highly recommended that the images referenced
be square (1:1 ratio), as this is the industry standard for podcast album art, and what podcast apps expect to work with. The srcset attribute is designed
to work like the ```srcset``` attribute in the HTML5 specification. Suggested widths are 1500px, 600px, 300px and 150px. See the example feed in this
repo for an example of how this looks in practice.
Category names are defined in the accompanying "categories.json" file in this repository. They should be referenced in the element by their textual name.
The characters can be in any case. This list of categories aims to replicate the current standard but also eliminate as much as possible compound, heirarchical
naming and the use of ampersands. Thus, "Health & Fitness" becomes "Health" and "Fitness" as two distinct categories. And, "Religion & Spirituality" becomes
two separate categories. Again, they are different things that don't always go together. Splitting them allows for more flexible combinations. And, avoiding
- **\<podcast:previousUrl>**[url this feed was imported from]**\</podcast:previousUrl>**
Channel
(optional | multiple)
Lists the previous url of this feed before it was imported. Any time a feed is moved, an additional **\<podcast:previousUrl>** element
should be added to the channel, to create a paper trail of all the previous urls this feed has lived at. This way, aggregators can easily deduplicate their feed lists.
If the "locked" element is present and set to "yes", podcasting hosts should not allow importing of this feed until the email listed in the element's owner="" attribute is
contacted and subsequently changes the value of the element to "no".
Their can be multiple **\<podcast:id>** elements to indicate a listing on multiple platforms, directories, hosts, apps and services. The "platform" attribute shall be a slug
representing the platform, directory, host, app or service. The slugs will look like this:
