Made for your next broadcast
Will Apple accept your feed?
Validate a podcast RSS feed.
Paste your feed URL. Get every problem Apple Podcasts, Spotify and the hourly-news fetcher would trip on — artwork size, itunes tags, enclosures, guids — with the fix for each.
- Free to use
- No signup required
- Works in your browser
The RSS feed URL from your podcast host — not the Apple Podcasts or Spotify page. Nothing is stored.
Your station, powered by Nobex
Record the show, and the feed writes itself.
Nobex records your live shows and publishes a valid podcast feed with artwork, itunes tags and an enclosure per episode. Point a news podcast at your station and it airs at the top of every hour.
- Go live from your browser, phone, or encoder
- Keep your station on air with Cloud AutoDJ
- Bring listeners to a player on your own website
Try test mode with no card. Paid plans for ongoing broadcasting.
Anatomy of a valid feed
What the directories actually read.
A podcast feed is an RSS 2.0 file with a handful of itunes tags. Apps read a surprisingly small set of them, and reject a feed for a surprisingly small set of mistakes.
| Tag | Rule |
|---|---|
| title | Show name |
| description | Up to 4,000 characters |
| itunes:image | Square JPEG/PNG, 1400–3000 px |
| language | e.g. en-us |
| itunes:category | At least one, from Apple’s list |
| itunes:explicit | true or false |
- 01
One enclosure per episode.
The <enclosure> tag is the episode: url (https), type (audio/mpeg for MP3, audio/x-m4a for AAC) and length in bytes. No enclosure, no episode — apps skip the item entirely.
- 02
A guid that never changes.
Set <guid isPermaLink="false"> to something stable — a UUID or the episode’s permanent ID — not the audio URL, which changes when you move hosts.
- 03
Dates apps can parse.
pubDate must be RFC 2822: Tue, 15 Sep 2026 10:00:00 +0000. A missing or malformed date puts the episode at the wrong end of the list or hides it.
- 04
Escape the ampersands.
A single raw & in a title breaks the whole XML file. Write &, or wrap descriptions in CDATA. The validator reports the feed as not well-formed when this happens.
- 05
Keep it under 2 MB.
Apps re-fetch the entire feed to look for one new episode. Long-running shows should trim descriptions or cap the feed at the latest few hundred episodes.
A few useful answers
What does the feed validator check?
It fetches the feed and confirms it is well-formed RSS 2.0, then checks the channel for a title, description, link, language, itunes:author, itunes:category, itunes:explicit, itunes:owner and artwork — including downloading the artwork header to confirm it is square and between 1400 and 3000 pixels. Then it checks every episode for a title, an https audio enclosure with a type and length, a unique guid, a readable pubDate, a duration and a description. Problems are grouped so one issue on 200 episodes is one line.
Why does Apple Podcasts reject my feed?
The usual reasons, in order: artwork that is missing, not square, or under 1400×1400; no itunes:category or itunes:explicit tag; an episode whose enclosure is http rather than https or has no audio type; and a feed that is not valid XML because a title contains an unescaped ampersand. The validator flags each of these with the tag to add or fix.
Does it work for Spotify, Amazon Music and Google?
Yes. They all read the same RSS 2.0 feed with the itunes namespace, and their requirements are a subset of Apple’s. Spotify additionally requires a valid pubDate on every episode and https enclosures, both of which are checked.
My feed is Atom. Is that a problem?
For a podcast, yes. Apple Podcasts, Spotify and nearly every podcast app only accept RSS 2.0 with itunes tags. Atom is fine for a blog. Most podcast hosts and WordPress podcast plugins produce RSS 2.0; if yours produces Atom, switch the feed format or use a podcast host.
What is a guid and why does it matter?
The guid is the permanent identity of an episode. Apps use it to know which episodes they have already downloaded. If you leave it out, some apps fall back to the enclosure URL and re-download everything when you move hosts; if two episodes share one guid, apps show only one of them.
Can I use a feed as an hourly news source on my station?
Yes. Nobex stations on every plan can point at a news podcast feed and the newest episode airs at the top of every hour. The same checks apply: the feed needs an audio enclosure on each episode and a pubDate so the newest one can be found. A feed that stops publishing is taken off air rather than repeated stale.
Is my feed URL stored?
No. The feed is fetched once for the check and the result is shown to you only. Nothing is saved or submitted anywhere.
Can Nobex make the feed for me?
Yes. On Pro and above, Nobex records your live shows and publishes a podcast feed with artwork, itunes tags, unique guids and an https enclosure per episode. Podcast hosting is usage-billed, so there is no monthly fee until people download episodes.
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