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.
To be adopted as an official part of the namespace, there must be consensus around a tag's usefulness and either commitment to adoption by at least 1 host and 1 app, or a recognition
that the tag is already being used in the wild.
It is ALWAYS ok to delay a tag to a future Phase if there is any concern about it. That is to be expected and encouraged.
When a Phase comes to a close, there will be a full review of any tags currently open for comment and questions will be asked to gather consensus before final adoption. No tags
will be adopted by fiat, or if there are unresolved questions. They will just be moved to the next Phase for further comment and refinement.
Tags that are proposals or rough ideas should be expected to have syntax problems or typos. Those should be refined away as they are worked on. If they are not, that is a good idea
that the tag in question isn't being seen as useful and should be considered for dropping.
We are not a "standards body". It is a community driven project where all stake holders are encouraged to participate, so that many voices are heard. This is an open-source
project to be built fully in the open. Discussions also take place on [podcastindex.social](https://podcastindex.social) where anyone is free to register and participate.
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.
The following tags have been formally adopted into the namespace. They are fully documented in the XMLNS document located [here](docs/1.0.md). Please see that file for
The following tags have been formally adopted into the namespace. They are fully documented in the XMLNS document located [here](docs/1.0.md). Please see that file for
The following tags should be considered purely as proposals. They should not be relied upon or implemented except for testing purposes and experimentation.
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.
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.
An `<enclosure>` tag must be present along with this tag within the item.
- **\<podcast:indexers>** + **\<podcast:block>[domain, bot or service slug]\</podcast:block>**
Channel (optional | single)
The "indexers" element is meant as a container for one or more `<podcast:block>` elements which send a signal to podcast aggregators whether they are allowed to pull and parse
this feed. If the aggregator is listed as blocked, it should take that as a signal by the feed owner to not index/aggregate this feed.
- **\<podcast:images srcset="[url to image] [pixelwidth(int)]w,
[url to image] [pixelwidth(int)]w,
[url to image] [pixelwidth(int)]w,
[url to image] [pixelwidth(int)]w" />**
Channel or Item
(optional | single)
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.
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"
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:
