How to resubmit a Feedburner podcast to iTunes

For months—months—I’d had trouble submitting the Comparative Media Studies Colloquium podcast feed to iTunes.

Today I finally had a free morning to really sort through these issues.

  1. When I tried to submit Feedburner’s podcast feed, I would get the message “It appears the feed has already been submitted.”
  2. That was a problem because the podcast was not listed in the iTunes podcast directory
  3. iTunes is notorious for not responding to requests for help, though I can’t blame them

(There were also problems with converting our podcast feed to XML and discovering that Feedburner now requires a Google account, but that’s not for now.)

After rooting around a dozen different help forums, one thing was clear: the only way to resubmit a podcast feed so that iTunes doesn’t think it’s a duplicate is to change certain key XML data. Though no one in these forums knew so, it turns out that you can change this data within Feedburner itself:

  1. Log in to your feed
  2. Click the Optimize tab
  3. In the sidebar under Services, click Title/Description Burner
  4. And within that, tweak the description of your podcast

I went an extra step and changed more, since all of that “Optimization data” is actually what shows up in your podcast feed’s XML. So I added geotag info, a new image, and selected the SmartCast and SmartFeed options….all the more to make it appear different from the previous version already submitted to iTunes.

The podcast should be on iTunes sometime next week. And though I hate to wait for it, this email I just got was so very sweet:

Dear Podcast Owner

Your podcast feed, [ http://feeds2.feedburner.com/MITCMSColloquium ] was successfully added and is now under review.

Sincerely,

The iTunes Store Team

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  • Brett

    Hi Andrew, Thank you for the informative posting. Did you have any issues with your podcast’s artwork appearing on the iPod after the podcast was uploaded? Feedburner’s feed at one point was incompatible in this one way. The artwork would show up on iTunes but not when playing the podcast on the iPod. Thanks, Brett

  • Brett

    Hi Andrew, Thank you for the informative posting. Did you have any issues with your podcast’s artwork appearing on the iPod after the podcast was uploaded? Feedburner’s feed at one point was incompatible in this one way. The artwork would show up on iTunes but not when playing the podcast on the iPod. Thanks, Brett

  • Andrew Whitacre

    Yep, I’ve had the problem too. In fact, less than a month after I fixed the problem above, Feedburner changed stuff again. So now there’s some sort of invalid character error that doesn’t seem to have much documentation.

  • Andrew Whitacre

    Yep, I’ve had the problem too. In fact, less than a month after I fixed the problem above, Feedburner changed stuff again. So now there’s some sort of invalid character error that doesn’t seem to have much documentation.

  • Andrew Whitacre

    And @Brett, just to follow up again, that invalid character issue was pretty mysterious but can be fixed by removing surrounding content. For me, it was a single character in a single URL, so I just removed the URL altogether. Not ideal, but got things working correctly again.

  • Andrew Whitacre

    And @Brett, just to follow up again, that invalid character issue was pretty mysterious but can be fixed by removing surrounding content. For me, it was a single character in a single URL, so I just removed the URL altogether. Not ideal, but got things working correctly again.

  • http://breakfastwinnipeg.com/ Leif Norman

    “It appears the feed has already been submitted” is what iTunes gives me when I follow the instructions.
    Poop.
    I went into Feedburner and changed a few things in the Smartcast like the Summary, a Category, the subtitle. Hit SAVE at the bottom. Went to Edit Feed Details to grab my FeedBurner feed and resubmit to iTunes.

    Then poop.

  • http://breakfastwinnipeg.com Leif Norman

    “It appears the feed has already been submitted” is what iTunes gives me when I follow the instructions.
    Poop.
    I went into Feedburner and changed a few things in the Smartcast like the Summary, a Category, the subtitle. Hit SAVE at the bottom. Went to Edit Feed Details to grab my FeedBurner feed and resubmit to iTunes.

    Then poop.

  • Anne

    Oh, thank you thank you! I thought I was totally messing things up and then I found your blog and it gave me the confidence to go ahead and change some things. I ended up changing the feed address because nothing else seemed to work. When worse comes to worse I guess that might be the last resort. At least we are back on iTunes.

  • Andrew

    !!!! This is awesome, thanks! I asked for my podcast to be removed from iTunes so I could update it with some newer information and I kept getting that error, I finally decided to Google for an answer and found this post. Thanks again, was finally able to get the podcast back into iTunes!

  • ElmoFromOK

    Thank you so much for finding this. I was running into the same problem and this really helped me tons!

  • http://www.rezdwanhamid.com/ Rezdwan Hamid

    Hello Andrew. I was Googling around and found this blog post. Like you, I had trouble resubmitting my podcast to the iTunes Store.

    I tried what you suggested and the submission works this time. I got the “iTunes Store Podcast Created Successfully Notification” email.

    Now my podcast is being reviewed and I hope it will be approved. It's been such a headache trying to figure this out but your blog post helped.

    Thank you very much!

  • http://fungibleconvictions.com/ Andrew Whitacre

    That's great to hear, Rezdwan. I was a little worried that iTunes and Feedburner had tweaked their systems enough in the last year that this would no longer work, but I'm glad it still does!

  • Pingback: Rezdwan Hamid

  • Mike

    Hi everyone. I need help. How can I analyze iTunes stats in Feedburner if I already have my RSS feed set up with ITunes? How can I see the stats and what do I have to do? thanks, Mike

  • Rockonfootball

    Dude,
    I’ve been trying to do this for a month….and you finally showed me how it could work! You are the greatest man alive!
    Really, thanks a ton!

  • Anonymous

    Like Rockonfootball said, thanks a ton!

  • http://profiles.google.com/authornobilis Nobilis Reed

    Thanks for posting this! My podcast was rejected ages ago, now I have a hope to get accepted again.

  • Nomes

    Same problem…I know this was a while ago but did you get a fix? I don’t want to have to start a new podcast with the Feedburner feed or I’ll lose my current subscribers! Thanks!

  • Andyalambo

    I have a client that submitted dozens of podcasts to ITunes, they were there for all to see, but just after fathers day he noticed that only 7 appear at a time and when a new one is submitted the oldest of the 7 drops ofF. Is there a way around this? Could you please respond via email to andyalambo@gmail.com
    Thanks,
    Andy

  • Cgoochjr

    This one didn’t work for me. Maybe it’s too late.

  • http://fungibleconvictions.com/ Andrew Whitacre

    Yeah, unfortunately it looks like the steps have changed since ’09. Cgoochjr, what kind of error did you get? Was it the annoying “It appears the feed has already been submitted” message?

  • Sndfx69

    I thank you so much for this solution; it really made my day. 

  • Jim

    Thank you, thank you, thank you. And, thank you!!!  

  • http://fantombox.com Kirk Clawes

    This worked exactly as described. Thanks for the helpful post!