The "podcast" Namespace

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. Our hope is that this namespace will become the framework that the independent podcast community needs to deliver new functionality to apps and aggregators.

Our guiding principles for development of this namespace are the "Rules for Standards Makers" by Dave Winer. Please read it before contributing if you aren't familiar with it.

The podcast namespace is part of the larger "Podcasting 2.0" project which exists to bring control of podcasting's protocols back into the hands of the open podcasting community. A good overview can be found here: Podcasting 2.0

• Official XMLNS Definition the official definition of all formalized tags.
• List of platforms and apps that currently implement some or all of these tags: Supporting Platforms and Apps.
• Example Feed: There is an example feed example.xml in this repository showing the podcastindex namespace side by side with the Apple itunes namespace.
• Other recommendations when creating RSS podcast feeds.

Current Roadmap

Phase 1 - [Closed] Comment period closed on 11/15/2020 and 5 tags were formalized.

Phase 2 - [Closed] Comment period closed on 1/31/2021 and 4 tags were formalized.

Phase 3 - [Closed] Comment period closed on 6/1/2021 and 5 tags were formalized.

Phase 4 - [Closed] Comment period closed on 12/1/2021 and 3 tags were formalized.

Phase 5 - [Open] Comment period is open as of 3/2/2022. Tag submissions and comments are welcome at this time. Tags here are under active consideration. New proposals are also here.

Legend

Formalized - This tag is frozen and listed in the XMLNS document. Any future changes to it's definition must maintain backwards compatibility.

Finalized - The tag is structurally stable and implementation testing should be considered safe. Any breaking changes will be widely communicated.

Open - The tag/phase is open for discussion and collaboration.

Required - This tag or attribute must be present.

Optional - This tag or attribute may be left out.

Recommended - This tag or attribute is technically optional, but is strongly recommended to be present for the tag to function as fully intended.

Tag Adoption Process

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 where anyone is free to register and participate.

Goal #1 - Eliminate Redundancy

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.

Goal #2 - Keep "required" tags and attributes minimal

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.

Goal #3 - Keep Exisiting Conventions

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.

Goal #4 - Be General... to a point

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.

Element List

Phase 1 (Closed on 11/15/20)

The following tags have been formally adopted into the namespace. They are fully documented in the XMLNS document located here. Please see that file for full implementation details.

• <podcast:locked>
  
• <podcast:transcript>
  
• <podcast:funding>
  
• <podcast:chapters>
  
• <podcast:soundbite>
  

Phase 2 (Closed on 1/31/21)

The following tags have been formally adopted into the namespace. They are fully documented in the XMLNS document located here. Please see that file for full implementation details.

• <podcast:person>
  
• <podcast:location>
  
• <podcast:season>
  
• <podcast:episode>
  

Phase 3 (Closed on 6/1/21)

The following tags have been formally adopted into the namespace. They are fully documented in the XMLNS document located here. Please see that file for full implementation details.

• <podcast:trailer>
  
• <podcast:license>
  
• <podcast:alternateEnclosure>
  
  • <podcast:source>
    
  • <podcast:integrity>
    
• <podcast:guid>
  

Phase 4 (Closed on 12/1/2021)

The following tags have been formally adopted into the namespace. They are fully documented in the XMLNS document located here. Please see that file for full implementation details.

• <podcast:medium>
  
• <podcast:images>
  
• <podcast:liveItem>
  

Phase 5 (Open as of 3/2/2022)

The following tags are being actively considered for adoption into the namespace as part of this phase. They are a work in progress and feedback on them is desired.

<podcast:socialInteract> - Discuss

<podcast:socialInteract
  uri="[uri of root post/comment(string)]"
  protocol="[slug of social protocol being used(slug)]"
  accountId="[account id of posting party(string)]"
  accountUrl="[url to posting party's platform profile(string)]"
  priority="[the order of rendering(int)]"
/>

Item

(optional | multiple)

This element allows a podcaster to attach the "root post" of a comment thread to an episode. This "root post" is treated as the canonical location of where the comments and discussion around this episode will take place. This can be thought of as the "official" social media comment space for this episode. If a protocol such as "activitypub" is used, or some other protocol that allows programmatic API access, these comments can be directly pulled into the app, and replies can be posted back to the thread from the app itself.

If multiple <podcast:socialInteract> tags are given for an <item>, the priority attribute is strongly recommended to give the app an indication as to which comments to display first.

This tag can also be used as a signal to platforms and apps that the podcaster does not want public comments shown alongside this episode. For this purpose a protocol value of "disabled" can be specified, with no other attributes or node value present.

Attributes

• uri (required) The uri/url of root post comment.
• protocol (required) The protocol in use for interacting with the comment root post.
• accountId (recommended) The account id (on the commenting platform) of the account that created this root post.
• accountUrl (optional) The public url (on the commenting platform) of the account that created this root post.
• priority (optional) When multiple socialInteract tags are present, this integer gives order or priority in ascending order of importance. A lower number means higher priority.

Example (simple):

<podcast:socialInteract uri="https://podcastindex.social/web/@dave/108013847520053258" protocol="activitypub" accountId="@dave" />

Example (complex):

<podcast:socialInteract priority="1" uri="https://podcastindex.social/web/@dave/108013847520053258" protocol="activitypub" accountId="@dave" accountUrl="https://podcastindex.social/web/@dave" />
<podcast:socialInteract priority="2" uri="https://twitter.com/PodcastindexOrg/status/1507120226361647115" protocol="twitter" accountId="@podcastindexorg" accountUrl="https://twitter.com/PodcastindexOrg" />

Example (disabled):

<podcast:socialInteract protocol="disabled" />

<podcast:block> - Discuss

<podcast:block
 exclude="[comma delimited list(string)]"
>
[yes|no(bool)]
</podcast:block>

Channel

(optional | single)

This element allows a podcaster to express which platforms are allowed to publicly display this feed and it's contents. In it's basic form, it is a direct drop-in replacement for <itunes:block> and functions identically. The addition of the exclude attribute allows for a comma separated list of platforms from the slug list to be given which operates as an inversion of the intent expressed by the node value.

Attributes

• exclude (optional) A comma separated list of platforms that will be interpreted as a block list or an allow list based on the inversion of the node value (yes or no).

Examples:

<!-- This means "block everything" -->
<podcast:block>yes</podcast:block>

<!-- This means "block nothing" -->
<podcast:block>no</podcast:block>

<!-- This means "block everything except spotify and google" -->
<podcast:block exclude="spotify,google">yes</podcast:block>

<!-- This means "block nothing other than apple and podcast index" -->
<podcast:block exclude="apple,podcastindex">no</podcast:block>

<podcast:complete> - Discuss

<podcast:complete
 archive="[feed url(string)]"
>
[yes|no(bool)]
</podcast:complete>

Channel

(optional | single)

This element allows a podcaster to signal to the world that this podcast will never publish another episode to this feed. In it's basic form, it is a direct drop-in replacement for <itunes:complete> and functions identically. The addition of the archive attribute allows for specifying the url of a complete archival feed of the podcast that contains every episode in case this feed does not.

Specifying a value of no is the same as this tag not being present.

Attributes

• archive (optional) A url of a feed that contains every episode of this podcast.

Examples:

<!-- This podcast will never publish again -->
<podcast:complete>yes</podcast:complete>

<!-- Redundant usage and not recommended -->
<podcast:complete>no</podcast:complete>

<!-- This podcast is over, and a complete episode archive feed is "here" -->
<podcast:complete archive="https://example.org/rss/myarchive.xml">yes</podcast:complete>

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Other Proposals

A list of the current proposed tags can be found in the issues section here.

Verification for Importing and Transferring

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".

IDs

There 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 full list is here. More should be added by the community as needed.

Badges and Media