Podcast artwork does not show in ITunes store

Question

I recently began producing a music podcast http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/felony-buddha/id375837423.
I am using blogger http://www.felonybuddha.com and feedburner http://www.felonybuddha.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss.
Initially I did not have the artwork url in SmartCast but I updated Smartcast
on 06/04/2010 with this url http://4.bp.blogspot.com/PuXcBmmd7sY/TAmrnudmrHI/AAAAAAAAAAM/W8kCV6S3N2U/s1600/iStock000010405007XSmall.jpg. I sent a Ping but the podcast artwork still does not show in Itunes store.
What am I doing wrong? Thank you for your help.

Answer 1

The Feedburner feed is probably OK: it does have the declaration and the correct image reference.. As there are no line returns separating the tags it appears either as one or two long lines or as a slab of text, so it's very difficult to read, and you might want to go through your original feed if you can, and put some line returns in.
Assuming it to be OK, you have two possibilities: both involve you editing the original feed.
For clarity let's label the feeds;
Feed 1 is your original, http://www.felonybuddha.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss
Feed 2 is the Feedburner-generated one, http://feeds.feedburner.com/felonybuddha/MhvA
Method 1: amend feed 1 to contain the necessary tags. The top section of the feed should read:
<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?>
<rss xmlns:atom='http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom'
xmlns:openSearch='http://a9.com/-/spec/opensearchrss/1.0/'
xmlns:georss='http://www.georss.org/georss'
xmlns:thr='http://purl.org/syndication/thread/1.0' version='2.0'
xmlns:itunes="http://www.itunes.com/dtds/podcast-1.0.dtd" version="2.0">
<channel>
Then in the top section of the feed, after 'channel' and before the first 'item' tag, add:
<itunes:image href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/PuXcBmmd7sY/TAmrnudmrHI/AAAAAAAAAAM/W8kCV6S3N2U/s1600/iStock000010405007XSmall.jpg" />
making sure you don't get this inside another tag (and there must be no line breaks within this). There are still other tags missing, which though they aren't essential, ought really to be there.
Method 2: this might be preferable - redirect iTunes to Feed 2. Feedburner does add a lot of garbage to the feed (intended for compatibility with other rss readers) but they shouldn't cause any problems; however there are some caveats, see below. The method:
You will need to add the following tag to Feed 1, after the 'channel' tag and before the first 'item' tag:
<itunes:new-feed-url>http://feeds.feedburner.com/felonybuddha/MhvA</itunes:new-feed-url>
Before doing this you should read this Apple Tech Note just so that you are completely clear what you are doing.
Re-upload the feed and leave it there until iTunes has changed to the new feed - this may take some days. To check whether it's changed, go to the Store page for your podcast, click on the 'Subscribe' button, go to the 'Podcasts' section in the sidebar, and click on the 'i' button on the extreme right of the line for your overall podcast (not the episode). The pane which pops up contains the feed iTunes is using.
Caveats:
Make sure you get the URL exactly right in the redirect. If you make a mistake *you will not be able to get it back* once iTunes has redirected.
Be aware that once you have transferred to Feed 2 you cannot edit that feed directly, only the feed you submit to Feedburner. This may possibly mean that if you later want to redirect to another feed you won't be able to.