GPM Explicit

[debenedictis]

It seems as though iTunes and Google Play Music may have different (conflicting?) requirements regarding the explicit tag. Here's an email from GPM:

Thanks for your patience on this. It looks like iTunes updated how their ingestor can take explicit tags. And it must be really new, as when we test your feed for validity, we get errors. But don't worry, your feed and podcast are still on GMP; it's just something iTunes changed. For us, we only take "yes", "no", or "clean" in the tag. If you could have you tech guy add an explicit tag to the podcast of "yes", that will help us. An example would be yes It will automatically update, with no refresh needed.

Below is an article on tagging and how we prioritize tagging for GPM: https://support.google.com/googleplay/podcasts/answer/6260341?hl=en&ref_topic=6249881

[pkarman]

@debenedictis can you give some detail on what this means for us? I.e. what needs to change?

[debenedictis]

@pkarman According to their documentation, Google only supports a "yes" or "no" value for the explicit tag (at both the Channel/Show level and the Item/Episode level): https://support.google.com/googleplay/podcasts/answer/6260341?hl=en&ref_topic=6249881 And, If a tag isn’t included, the content will not be considered explicit by Google.

Apple supports "yes | explicit | true" or "clean | no | false" for the explicit tag (at both the Channel and Item level): https://help.apple.com/itc/podcasts_connect/?lang=en#/itcb54353390 It is not clear if Apple requires the explicit tag.

For explicit content, the PRX Publishing Platform uses this at the Channel level: <itunes:explicit>explicit</itunes:explicit> And this at the Item level: <itunes:explicit>yes</itunes:explicit> For example, here: https://feeds.feedburner.com/earhustlesq

What this means for us, is that, at the Channel level, we should consider changing to "yes" for explicit content, rather than "explicit", since Google's docs claim to only recognize yes or no values (and iTunes claims to recognize "yes").

[debenedictis]

@pkarman For background... In February "Pounded in the Butt by My Own Podcast" had trouble getting into Google Play Music because they were using "explicit" instead of "yes".