podcast-namespace/publishers/publishers.md

The Publisher Medium

v1.0 - April 5, 2024

Below, you will find implementation details about using the publisher value in the <podcast:medium> tag to create "publisher feeds".

Overview

The idea of a "publisher" is that a single entity (person, organization, record label, etc) might be the responsible party which produces multiple podcast feeds. In such a case it would be useful to be able to see all of a publisher's podcasts collected in a single place. For instance, a news organization might produce 12 different podcast feeds. Or, a music artist might produce 3 albums of music using the <podcast:medium> tag of music. In those cases, having a high level feed that references these other feeds would make it easier for podcast apps to associate those feeds with a particular publishing entity.

Likewise, it is helpful if the produced feeds link back to the "publisher feed" so that podcast apps can walk back up the chain from a podcast feed to it's publisher in order to find other relevant content from that publishing entity. For instance, a listener may subscribe to a music album by an artist and want to find their other albums and singles.

When a publisher feed links to it's "child" feeds, and those "child" feeds link back to their "parent" publisher feeds, this provides a two-way validation that a feed is indeed a valid part of a publishing entities portfolio of content. If a feed links to a publisher feed without the publisher feed referencing it, that association should be discarded.

Publisher Feed Requirements

A publisher feed must have the following parts in it's <channel>:

1. A <podcast:medium> tag with a value of publisher.
2. A valid <podcast:guid>.
3. One or more <podcast:remoteItem> tags that link to podcast feeds.

Example

The following example shows a publisher feed that links to all of the feeds published by the "AgileSet Media" entity. This feed also makes use of the <podcast:person> tag to define a responsible person at the publishing entity.

<rss xmlns:podcast="https://github.com/Podcastindex-org/podcast-namespace/blob/main/docs/1.0.md" version="2.0">
    <channel>
        <title>AgileSet Media</title>
        <link>https://agilesetmedia.com</link>
        <description>AgileSet Media is an unincorporated, unregistered, and unpapered entity of AgileSet LLC for producing and publishing stuff by Mike Neumann. It is based in Texas, USA.</description>
        <image>
            <url>https://agilesetmedia.com/assets/static/AgileSet-logo-square-sm-144.png</url>
            <title>AgileSet Media</title>
            <link>https://agilesetmedia.com</link>
            <width>144</width>
            <height>144</height>
        </image>
        <podcast:person href="https://mikeneumann.net" group="Creative Direction" role="Director" img="https://itsamood.org/assets/static/MikeNeumann_202310.jpg">Mike Neumann</podcast:person>
        <podcast:guid>003af0a0-6a45-55bf-b765-68e3d349551a</podcast:guid>
        <podcast:medium>publisher</podcast:medium>
        <podcast:remoteItem medium="podcast" feedGuid="469b403f-db2d-574c-9db9-96dbb3f6561c" feedUrl="https://itsamood.org/itsamoodrss.xml"/>
        <podcast:remoteItem medium="podcast" feedGuid="72816866-317e-5e48-8895-8193d58e5b57" feedUrl="https://mikesmixtape.com/mikesmixtaperss.xml"/>
        <podcast:remoteItem medium="podcast" feedGuid="7a2d292c-8656-5fcf-88d2-31b10e54d7c7" feedUrl="https://mikeneumann.show/themnshowrss.xml"/>
    </channel>
</rss>

Linking to Publisher Feeds

While not strictly required, adding a reference to the publisher feed from the "child" feeds is a good idea, as it makes discovery of your other content much easier. Podcast apps can see this linkage and "walk back up the chain" to your publisher feed and then recommend your other podcast content to a listener. To do this, you will need to add a <podcast:publisher> tag in the <channel> of the "child" feed that will contain a <podcast:remoteItem> link to the publisher feed.

Example

The following example snippet shows a podcast feed produced by "AgileSet Media" that links to the publisher feed example above.

<rss xmlns:itunes="http://www.itunes.com/dtds/podcast-1.0.dtd" xmlns:content="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/" xmlns:podcast="https://github.com/Podcastindex-org/podcast-namespace/blob/main/docs/1.0.md" version="2.0">
    <channel>
        <title><![CDATA[It's A Mood]]></title>
        <description>A value4value happenstance music show.</description>
        <link>https://itsamood.org</link>
        <generator>Sovereign Feeds</generator>
        <podcast:person href="https://mikeneumann.net" group="cast" role="host" img="https://itsamood.org/assets/static/MikeNeumann_202310.jpg">Mike Neumann</podcast:person>
        <podcast:guid>469b403f-db2d-574c-9db9-96dbb3f6561c</podcast:guid>
        <podcast:medium>podcast</podcast:medium>
        <podcast:publisher>
            <podcast:remoteItem medium="publisher" feedGuid="003af0a0-6a45-55bf-b765-68e3d349551a" feedUrl="https://agilesetmedia.com/assets/static/feeds/publisher.xml"/>            
        </podcast:publisher>
        <item>
            <title><![CDATA[Runnin']]></title>
            <pubDate>Wed, 03 Apr 2024 02:06:28 +0000</pubDate>
            ...
        </item>
    </channel>
</rss>