Managing your podcast feeds

Owned by Anna Pettersen (Deactivated)
Last updated: Dec 21, 2022 by Bill Best
2 min read

Podcasts are now available as entities in their own right that can be managed separately from stations.

You can add Podcasts using the Podcasts link in the left hand navigation panel.

From this page you can:

  • Add a podcast (RSS feed)

  • Attach that podcast feed to your stations

  • Control the platforms on which this podcast feed is available

  • Define a specific genre for the podcast

When you save the podcast we will check that it’s valid, i.e.:

  • The RSS feed can be parsed

  • There are no issues with the episodes in the feed (e.g. all publication dates are valid)

Radioplayer extracts the show name and description from the feed, along with the show url. You can use that to determine whether the feed is correct. For example, sometimes Radioplayer receives feeds which are links to web pages that display all the episodes - that is not a valid podcast feed.

New podcasts are given a ‘draft’ status. The territory owner will check the feed and set it to live if they are happy with it at which point the shows will be attached to the selected stations.


Validation Warnings and Errors

There are two types of error that prevent Radioplayer from processing a podcast feed.

  1. Podcast can’t be retrieved from the URL: Error code PV001

This means that the podcast is either not there (404) or Radioplayer is denied access to the feed (403). Open the podcast dialog and click the feed URL to open it to see what the problem is - you may have mistyped the URL or something in your back end system is preventing us from accessing the file

2. Podcast can’t be parsed: Error code PV002

This means that the URL is available but the feed is invalid. As above, open the podcast dialog and click on it. A common mistake is to link directly to an iTunes show page (e.g https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-best-of-the-chris-evans-breakfast-show/id1450650136?mt=2 )- this is not a valid RSS feed. You need to enter the URL of the XML file, not the show page

Your podcast will display a warning if the podcast was valid at one time but we have since tried to process it and failed (either the feed is not there any more or it is not valid).

Radioplayer will attempt to process the feed again but you should check it to make sure that you have not introduced any problems.

If you cannot see anything wrong with your podcast please try the validator at https://validator.w3.org/feed/ to see what it flags up. You may have missing enclosures, images or invalid tags in your XML file.