Getting Your Podcast Description to Update in iTunes Using Feedburner

Adapted from my original article How to Update iTunes Podcast Info in Feedburner.

If you've ever tried to update your iTunes store podcast information, you know it's pretty easy . . . that is, unless you use the Feedburner podcast service. When Google acquired the podcast service, it committed to keeping the same interface people have come to know.  The problem is that podcasting service is very un-Google-like.  A simple feature like updating your information is buried in menues! Until they do something to make it easier, you can use this guide to find what you need.

Step 1. Login to the Feeburner podcast service.  You'll be presented with the Feedburner dashboard. In the middle of the page, there's a list of all the feeds you own.  Click on the podcast you want to modify.

Step 2. The podcast service offers a lot of features, so this is where it's easy to get lost.  At the top of the page there are several tabs.  Click on the one that says "Optimize".

Step 3. Another large number of podcast service features are going to pop up on your screen.  On the left hand side, under the services menu, click "SmartCast". This is the page responsible for iTMS information.  When you change something here, the podcast service will alter your feed to show iTunes this information (even if your Blog has conflicting information).

Step 4. Scroll down and check "Include iTunes podcasting element" to override the previous source of information.  If you want to manually provide your own file links, you can turn off the enclosure feature from the top drop down box. The summary, title, and keywords fields are right below that. If you want to edit the explicit and copyright settings, they're at the bottom of the page.

Step 5. You can click the "Save" button and the Feedburner podcast service will save your information. If you'd rather turn off the feature entirely (allowing you to edit the info from another podcast service like Wordpress) there's a small "Deactive" button you can hit in the lower right hand corner.  This will remove the SmartCast podcast service (although Feedburner will still be active). 

Step 6. To get the information to show up in iTunes, you have to ping their service. You would think the podcast service would do this automatically, but no such luck. Go to the iTunes ping URL https://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZFinance.woa/wa/pingPodcast?feedURL=http://FEED-URL and replace  http://FEED-URL with your actual feed URL.  Your information will finally be updated!

Additional Tips

• Depending on which plug-in you use, the Wordpress podcast service can also handle iTunes information for you.
• The Blogger podcast service appears to need Feedburner to edit any iTMS information.