How Podcasts on iTunes Work

A client of mine just asked me a question that I get often regarding podcasts on iTunes. Questions on this topic are frequent and there seems to be a general lack of understanding about how podcasts on iTunes work, so I thought I'd post my answer for others to read as well.

This explanation of how a podcast works with iTunes may help.

iTunes is simply a marketplace for people to find podcasts.

For a podcast to successfully show up in the iTunes store, a few things need to be in place:

1. The podcast file itself (in mp3 or other acceptable format)

2. JPG image that displays as the artwork on the page and on the playback device

3. XML file - which is essentially a file that contains programming that gives iTunes the information it needs to display the podcast info correctly and allow iTunes to know when a new podcast in a series is created

All of these things need to live on a server, somewhere on the internet. iTunes does not store any podcast files.

For a company to put all their podcasts under one account, they'll need to gather all the podcasts together and create an XML file that has the proper iTunes info pointing to the podcasts. Then that will need to be placed with the audio files on a server and that feed will need to be submitted to iTunes.

There is then a review process that takes between 1-7 days before it goes live.

This is a service I provide for my clients during the podcast creation process.

I think the key takeaway here is that all of these files are stored on a server somewhere that is NOT iTunes. iTunes does not store podcasts on their server. The iTunes store is just a good place to find podcasts.