podCALGARY

From The iTunes Podcasting Team:

iTunes launched a revised set of categories for podcasts listed in the iTunes Music Store. The revised categories and subcategories are listed below. iTunes recommends that you take the time to change your podcast feed as soon as possible. They will support the use of the old category names for the next few months, so there is no immediate deadline for making these changes.

When they read your RSS feed, they capture and store up to 3 category+subcategory pairs, and they use all of them to populate the browse lists that you see when you click the “Browse” link in the Music Store. However, the first category+subcategory pair listed in your feed is the most important, since it is the one listed as the Category field on your podcast page, and it is the only one used to map your podcast into the category feature pages.

Most of the old categories and subcategories are now automatically mapped to corresponding ones within the new system. For example, if your podcast was listed under “Arts & Entertainment > Photography”, it will now appear under “Arts > Visual Arts.” However, 3 categories have been removed and do not have a similar replacement: “International”, “Talk Radio”, and “Public Radio”. If one of these categories is listed as the first subject in your podcast feed, that category information will be ignored and the second category will be used to determine eligibility and placement in that feature page.

Changes to your categories may take 1-2 weeks from the time you edit your feed, so please review and add new category data as soon as possible to ensure your podcast is listed appropriately. New categories and subcategories that did not exist in the old browse structure will appear as podcasts are mapped to them.

For specific instructions on adding categories to your page, refer to the iTunes:category section of the technical spec. Note that the spec will be updated soon with new category data, but the format is the same:

http://www.apple.com/itunes/podcasts/techspecs.html#_Toc526931682

The new categories and subcategories are listed below. Note that some of the new categories may not yet appear in the Music Store because they are not yet populated by podcasts.

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Categories are listed below, with their subcategories listed beneath them:

Arts

* Design

* Fashion & Beauty

* Food

* Literature

* Performing Arts

* Visual Arts

Business

* Business News

* Careers

* Investing

* Management & Marketing

* Shopping

Comedy

Education

* Educational Technology

* Higher Ed

* K-12

* Language Courses

* Training

Games & Hobbies

* Automotive

* Aviation

* Hobbies

* Other Games

* Video Games

Government & Organizations

* Local

* National

* Non-Profit

* Regional

Health

* Alternative Health

* Fitness & Nutrition

* Self-Help

* Sexuality

Kids & Family

Music

News & Politics

Religion & Spirituality

* Buddhism

* Christianity

* Hinduism

* Islam

* Judaism

* Other

* Spirituality

Science & Medicine

* Medicine

* Natural Sciences

* Social Sciences

Society & Culture

* History

* Personal Journals

* Philosophy

* Places & Travel

Sports & Recreation

* Amateur

* College & High School

* Outdoor

* Professional

Technology

* Gadgets

* IT News

* Podcasting

* Software How-To

TV & Film

This entry was posted on Monday, July 10th, 2006 at 12:31 pm and is filed under News & Announcements. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.