Apple iTunes Podcast Publishing

UPDATE: 7/15/05: It’s live. Click here to go to the iTunes Music Store, podcasting area.

UPDATE 7/14/05: It’s now Friday Thursday…nearly ONE WEEK since I submitted my podcast and it’s still not there!

Must admit being quite enthusiastic when Apple released iTunes 4.9 with support for podcasting. As someone who *has* been podcasting and has published to Podcast Alley, PodcastMN and other directories without a problem, I thought Apple’s ease-of-use would extend to those of us publishing and not just the listeners…and that publishing a podcast to *the* creator of the iPod’s digital audio hub called iTunes would be the best possible experience.

On Saturday I published my podcast to the iTunes podcast portion of the Music Store…even after adding support for the special Apple XML tags. I’ve been dismayed that — 50 hours after posting my podcast feed — it still doesn’t appear in the iTunes directory listing and, of course, there is no way to contact anyone to ask “So what’s up?”.

I’ve heard from others in the PodcastMN group that there have been issues of some shows showing up in the directory while others don’t; significant delays in publishing like one week after submission; and content (like SexandPodcasting…which, BTW, has *nothing* to do with sex) showing up in the wrong category…without recourse by the podcast publisher.

Maybe this is just growing pains and Apple ensuring they can preview every show, but the company needs to address this immediately. My concern? Apple may very well turn off the indie publisher like me and focus only on mainstream content providers (with the same drivel that have forced most of us away from mainstream radio). Those of us building an audience (and arguably building podcasting itself) will be left twistin’-in-the-wind or will flock to other directories like Podcast Alley. That would be unfortunate for Apple too since the thousands of indie podcasters will buy a lot more Mac’s, iPods, Garageband accessories and Apple Loops than will ABC News, Al Franken or Disney.