Error when submitting podcast: unable to download episodes from your feed

Hi everyone!
When I want to submit my podcast in iTunes, it tells me it is unable to download episodes from my feed.
I uploaded my mp3 file and xml file to an ftp-server, could there be a problem?
Thanks in advance!
Kind regards,
Jannes

Your feed won't access in FireFox (my default rss reader) or Safari when set as an rss reader, and it was unable to download the file. I was able to access and read it in Terminal and using FeedValidator but it comes to an abrupt end 28 lines in - see the report:
http://feedvalidator.org/check.cgi?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.setanta.com%2Fie%2F%3Ffe ed%3Dpodcast
(ignore the error on line 14, this is irrelevant.)
Either your feed file is corrupt or the server is acting up in some way - you would have to take that up with the people running it.

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Podcast problem -- "difficulty downloading episodes from your feed"

I've entered the URL " http://feeds.feedburner.com/MirrorOfIntimacy " and keep getting an error message "We had difficulty downloading episodes from your feed."
I read through other discussions, and changed the URL in Tumblr from https to http, but I'm still getting the error message. Any help?

The meta tags are irrelevant: only an image embedded in the audio file is read by iTunes. The feed contains all the information, and must be properly constructed. Yours is made in Tumblr, and I would expect it could create a podcast feed but it isn't doing so at the moment. I can onlly refer you to their Help files to find out how to construct an iTunes-compliant feed.
You may find my 'get you started' page helpful - it contains a sample basic feed, and though I'm certainly not suggesting you should hand-write the feed (a process littered with pitfalls) it will show you what a feed should look like.
http://rfwilmut.net//pc

ITunes Says Having Difficulty Downloading Episodes From Your Feed

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Hii,
i am trying to submit a xml feed to submit podcast ,
but i get a error massage we had difficulty downloading episodes from your feed
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</itunes:owner>
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<itunes:category text="Arts">
<itunes:category text="Design"/>
</itunes:category>
<itunes:image href="http://phmedia.mediaimages.net/iTunesPodcastCover/10423_10526.png"/>
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<itunes:block>No</itunes:block>
<item>
<title>12061_13536.mp4</title>
<description>video desc 1</description>
<link>
http://phmedia.mediaimages.net:1935/vod/_definst_/mp4:0165/12061_13536.mp4/playl ist.m3u8
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<enclosure url="http://phmedia.mediaimages.net:1935/vod/_definst_/mp4:0165/12061_13536.mp4/playl ist.m3u8" length="1070" type="video/mp4"/>
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<itunes:keywords>v1, v2, v3, v4</itunes:keywords>
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The missing opening tags problem was caused by your pasting the contents into the forum and is not present in the actual feed. However you have two serious and two minor faults.
Your media file URL is
http://phmedia.mediaimages.net:1935/vod/_definst_/mp4:0165/12061_13536.mp4/playl ist.m3u8
This isn't a media file, it's a m3u playlist at 4kB. You need to provide a direct link to your media file and the URL must end with an extension, e.g. mp4
Your 'itunes:image' is a png which appears to be a screenshot: it should be 1400 x 1400 px or the feed won't be accepted, and it must be less the 500kB. You should choose a logo which will work when reduced to the size on the Store page.
You are missing what should be the first line of your feed:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
Your 'pubdate' tag reads
<pubDate>Thu Feb 20 02:39:12 EST 2014</pubDate>
There should be a comma after the 'Thu' and the '2014' should be after 'Feb', not at the end.
Your 'itunes:duration' tag reads
<itunes:duration>0:0:29</itunes:duration>
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<itunes:duration>0:00:29</itunes:duration>
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Finally, your title is 'iTunes1' which is valid but not a good title. You should choose something which gives an idea of the content.

Getting "We had difficulty downloading episodes from your feed" error.

My RSS feed is here: http://www.icpl.org/podcast/one-of-a-kind/rss/
I'm attempting to submit our podcast to itunes but getting an error reading "We had difficulty downloading episodes from your feed"
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Your media file URLs are not acceptable. For one thing it's a forced download - the file should play in Safari when you enter the URL in the address bar, not download, and also the URL does not end with a media file extension e.g. .mp3.
You need to provide a direct link to the file, which should be hosted on a website server capable of handling 'byte range requests', and the URL must include the extension.

"Difficulty downloading episodes from your feed" error

There seem to be a lot fo threads like this, but none of the problems are quite the same. I've got a self-hosted wordpress site, and a soundcloud account.
I applied for the podcasting beta from soundcloud, and the RSS they provide is here. If I add that feed to itunes, it says "The feed has no episodes."
So I said fine, I'll host the .mp3s on archive.org, so I did that, and got the wordpress plugin "Seriously Simple Podcasting," set it up including links to the mp3 files hosted on archive put at the top, the RSS feed for that is here. When I punch that in to itunes, it gives me the "we had difficulty downloading episodes from your feed" error. So I tried to use feedburner, (feed here) either to syndicate the seriously simple podcasting feed, or to syndicate the feed from my wordpress site directly (without the plugin). I've also tried plugging that last feed directly into itunes w/o feedburner, in all cases, I get the "difficulty downloading episodes..." error.
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DO NOT use the souncloud RSS feed - if you ever decide to leave them you will loose all your audience.
They do not provide the tools needs to change your feed to a new host.
You can't add in the iTunes new feed tag nor can you add in a redirect.
What ever your do - do NOT use the soundcloud RSS feed.
Regards,
Rob W

Error: "We had difficulty downloading episodes from your feed." I don't see what I've done wrong?

When I try to submit my podcast I receive the error "We had difficulty downloading episodes from your feed." I don't understand what's wrong. My feed is "http://sleuthcast.tumblr.com/rss".

Your episode media file is hosted on Dropbox, and you've evidently placed it in the area intended for your own storage, judging by the error page which it leads to.
Dropbox does do webspace hosting, though this isn't what you are using: but you would be advised not to use Dropboc - it really isn't suitable for podcast media files. There have been numerous problems with it reported on these forums.
You should host your media files on an ordinary website server. You need to check before committing to one that it can handle 'byte range requests' - this is the method used by iPhone for accessing these files (by requesting part of it at a time rather than the whole thing) and it's mandatory for being in the Store. If the service you are considering using doesn't confirm they can handle this (and I might add the Dropbox doesn't) you will need to go somewhere else.

I keep getting a "We had difficulty downloading episodes from your feed" error.

I've been trying to post a podcast, but I keep getting a "We had difficulty downloading episodes from your feed" Error message. The RSS feed I created is http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/mjBrW. Any help would be appreciated.

Your feed is now OK and can be subscribed to in iTunes, so that's a start. However your media file itself is not accessible. The URL for it in the feed is
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/InTheFace/~5/B6E3DAcZCXU/InTheFaceEpisode1BadGran dpa.mp3
This redirects to
http://a1.podbean.com/646726/InTheFaceEpisode1BadGrandpa.mp3?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIA JLA6NPUL6BLALQ2A&Expires=1385103002&Signature=l4iImb8F5UB%2FZzo9gAmzyXwM%2FBc%3D
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<Error>
<Code>AccessDenied</Code>
<Message>Request has expired</Message>
<RequestId>D2B711C098C2AF2E</RequestId>
<Expires>2013-11-22T06:50:02Z</Expires>
<HostId> /vxmBjlZGuT2p5gdqXe51JV90o9Ep08YLQWJVW10bn17PUBcRyX85n/FL0K0qqnc</HostId>
<ServerTime>2013-11-22T07:33:36Z</ServerTime>
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The infamous "We had difficulty downloading episodes from your feed" error

Hi all,
I'm trying to submit a podcast to iTS, but it's failing with the infamous "We had difficulty downloading episodes from your feed" error.
The feed validates (here and here); all the tags that are suppossed to be there are there; the enclosures are there and readable; the server accepts byte-range requests.
Could someone smarter than I have a glance over and see if they can spot anything?
A sample feed can be seen here.
Many thanks.

I would ask one simple question - Why are you not just releasing your episodes as .mp3 format?
The recommended encoding for audio podcasts is:
.MP3 - format
64 kbpb - Bit Rate
44.1 khz - sample rate
mono or joint stereo
This gives good audio quality at the size of 0.5 mb per minute. It is used by most of the big shows in iTunes and it compatible with all players and aggregators.
Trying to trick the system to use a non-standard format is likely going to cause you issues - it is best to go with the settings above if you want the least amount of issues for you and your potenital listeners.
Rob W

How to fix the 'We had difficulty downloading episodes from your feed' error

I'm getting the error 'we had difficulty downloading episodes from your feed' error but I can subscribe directly to the rss feed via File>Subscribe to Podcast.
The rss feed is: http://ithinkyouthink.libsyn.com/rss
I've used feedvalidator and it says everything is good except for some minor suggestions. How do I fix this? I'm waiting on Libsyn to contact me directly, but I figured I'd try this to see if anyone could help.

This is a bug in the iTunes submission system where it gives a false negative. Libsyn servers are 100% compliant with iTunes.
Please submit again - it usually will go through the second time. If not wait 10 minutes and submit again.
Apple is aware of this issue - but it has been around for a while.

Submit error: we had difficulty downloading episodes from your feed

I have created a new feed for Lifestream.org at https://www.lifestream.org/podcast.xml and it works subscribing in iTunes, but fails upon submission to Apple with "We had difficulty downloading episodes from your feed."
The site is on Drupal 7, with Views iTunes RSS provding the feed.
Please advise.

I can't see any reason why this should be. The feed validates OK (there are a few minor niggles but nothing which would cause this problem) and the episode file I checked played perfectly well. None of the usual culprits (wrong sort of media type, https in the media file URL, 'itunes:block' tag set to yes) is the case here.
We've seen cases where files which worked everywhere else wouldn't work in the iTunes Store; I've not seen any explanation for this - my guess (and I emphasize that it is a guess) is that some servers don't handle requests from the iTunes Store properly, but I don't know enough about server technology to say whether this is possible or what would cause it. You could try asking your server provider whether they have any information on this.
You could try hosting a few episode media files on another server and see whether that deals with it. Or it might even be a temporary glitch at Apple's end - you could leave it a day or two and try again.
Other than that I'm afraid I can't suggest anything.

Error when submitting podcast: unable to download episodes from your feed

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