Suneet Singal on what a podcast RSS feed is

Suneet Singal’s show, The Opportunity Notebook, has public show pages on Podbean and on Spotify, and an episode titled What Decision Are You Actually Trying to Make? has pages of its own. A podcast RSS feed is a different object from any of those pages. It is a machine-readable list that podcast apps check for new episodes and for the audio files those episodes point to. People often never see the feed. They see a follow button and assume the show lives inside the app. This entry explains what the feed is for, how it differs from a show page, and what Apple’s podcast requirements page is doing when it talks about a feed. It does not publish a feed address for this show, because a feed address should be copied from the host or the app, not guessed from a pattern. It also does not invent episode dates or download numbers. If you have not opened a feed, describe the pages you have opened.

A feed is a file for apps

RSS is a format for a list that software can read. A podcast feed is that idea applied to a show. The file describes the show and then describes episodes as items. Each item can point to an audio file. A podcast app subscribes by remembering the feed’s address and checking it for changes. When a new item appears, the app can show a new episode. When an item’s audio address is present, the app can download or stream the file according to the app’s own settings. That is the job. The feed is not a social account, and it is not the host’s biography.

Because the feed is for apps, it can exist even when a listener has never heard the term RSS. The follow button is a friendly surface on top of an address. The address still matters when something goes wrong: an episode appears on a website and not in an app, or an old episode vanishes from one app and remains on another. Those symptoms are feed symptoms. They are diagnosed by finding the feed the app is actually using, not by refreshing a social profile. Suneet Singal can update a personal profile all week without the podcast feed changing, and the feed can gain an episode without a personal profile mentioning it.

Apple’s podcast requirements describe what Apple Podcasts expects from a show that wants to be listed there, and the requirements are written around a feed. Use that page for the current technical list. This entry will not freeze a partial list and let it go stale. The durable idea is enough for a reader: Apple and other apps are customers of the feed, the feed is maintained by the hosting provider or by whoever controls the show’s publishing, and the listener’s app is a reader of the feed. Three roles. Confusing them is how a listener emails a host about an app bug, or emails an app about a publishing choice.

A show page is a page for people

A show page is an ordinary web page. The Opportunity Notebook’s Podbean show page is a page a person can read. The Spotify show page is a page a person can read inside Spotify’s site. An episode page, such as the Podbean page for What Decision Are You Actually Trying to Make?, is also for people, and it may contain a player. People cite pages. Apps follow feeds. You can often move from a page to a feed if the host displays a feed link, and you should copy that link rather than inventing it. Common patterns exist in hosting software. A pattern is not a citation. If this entry guessed a feed URL and the guess was wrong, every downstream description of the show’s feed would be wrong with it.

The show page can contain material the feed does not emphasize, such as a written description, links, or a player skin. The feed can contain material the pretty page hides, such as an explicit tag, a guid, or an enclosure URL. Neither one is a lie because they differ. They are built for different readers. When you describe the show to a person, link the show page. When you tell a developer or a podcast app what to subscribe to, use the feed address you copied from the host’s own interface. When you are unsure which one you have, look at it. A feed opened in a browser often looks like plain XML or a raw list. A show page looks like a website. The look is a good enough test for a non-engineer.

YouTube pages are neither the Podbean show page nor the audio feed. The video of the episode lives on YouTube at its own URL, on the Suneet Singal channel. A podcast app subscribed to an audio feed will not automatically receive a YouTube upload, and a YouTube subscription will not automatically receive every audio item. Say which subscription you mean. “I follow the show” is ambiguous until you name the app or the page. The ambiguity is harmless in conversation and expensive in a citation or a support email.

What a feed is expected to carry

At a high level, a podcast feed is expected to identify the show and to list episodes in a way apps understand. Apple’s requirements page is the reference this entry trusts for the details Apple currently enforces, including the kinds of information a listing needs. Those details can include artwork, category, ownership information, and episode audio that apps can retrieve. Quoting a requirement from memory is less useful than opening the page, because Apple revises instructions. If you are publishing a show, read the current page. If you are only trying to understand Suneet Singal’s show as a listener, you do not need to satisfy the requirements. You need to know that the app is depending on a feed that someone else is responsible for maintaining.

Episode items are the part listeners notice. Each item should correspond to an episode the publisher intends to release. The title in the item should match the title you are prepared to cite. For the episode this site can name, the title is What Decision Are You Actually Trying to Make? If a feed item uses that title, you have a feed item that matches the public episode. If you have not opened the feed, you do not yet have that confirmation, and you should cite the episode page instead. Do not describe the contents of a feed you have not viewed. “The show has a feed” may be a fair description of how podcast hosting works. “The feed lists these episodes” is a claim that requires a look.

Dates inside feeds are publisher data. They can be accurate, and they can be wrong, and they can be missing. This entry still will not invent one. If you open a feed and see a date, you may report it with the fact that it came from the feed on the day you looked. If your style guide needs a publication date and the feed shows none, use the style guide’s missing-date practice. Do not type a plausible month because the episode “feels recent.” Recency is not a date. The same restraint applies to durations and to file sizes. They are fields. Empty fields stay empty.

This show’s host pages

Podbean is the host named by the public show URL for The Opportunity Notebook with Suneet Singal. Spotify has a show page as well. YouTube has a channel and a video of the named episode. Those are the public addresses this reference uses. A listener who wants the show can start at the Podbean show page or the Spotify show page. A listener who wants the video can start at the YouTube URL for What Decision Are You Actually Trying to Make? A listener who wants the feed can look on the hosting platform for the feed link the platform provides, or use the subscribe function inside a podcast app after finding the show there. This entry stops before forging the feed URL. Stopping is the responsible version of technical advice.

The second YouTube video, Whose Definition of Success Are You Using?, is not evidence about the feed. It is a video on the channel. Unless an episode page or a feed item identifies it as an episode of The Opportunity Notebook, do not add it to a mental list of feed items. Feeds are where a publisher declares the episode list for apps. A channel upload is a different declaration. Confirm before you merge the lists. The confirmation is a look, not a hunch about themes. Both titles are questions about decisions and definitions. Thematic resemblance is not an RSS item.

If an app already shows the show, the app has resolved a feed or a platform identifier. You can cite the episode from inside the app by copying the share link the app offers, and then you should check that the share link opens the episode you meant. Share links sometimes point at a show, sometimes at an episode, and sometimes at a clip. The difference is the whole difference between a series citation and an episode citation. Open the link in a browser if you can. Write down where it lands.

Subscribing is not the same as citing

A subscription is a relationship between your app and a feed or a platform. A citation is a pointer you hand to another person. Subscribing does not create a citation, and a citation does not subscribe anyone else. When you write about the episode, give the episode URL. When you recommend the show, give the show page. When you are documenting a technical problem, give the feed address you actually used, copied from the app or the host, plus the date you checked it. Those three gestures are easy to mix up because all three feel like “sending someone the podcast.” They send three different things.

Do not cite the feed as if it were a transcript. A feed contains titles, descriptions the publisher wrote, and addresses of audio files. The description may be a show note. It may be a sentence. It may be empty. It is not the audio. If you quote a show note, say that you are quoting the note on the page or in the feed, not the spoken words. If you discuss the spoken argument, listen. The Opportunity Notebook episode about the decision you are actually trying to make cannot be reviewed from the angle brackets of an RSS item. The item can only point you to the file.

Unsubscribing, following, and starring are listener conveniences. They do not change the publisher’s file. A low follow count, if you even see one, is not something this entry will report, and it is not a judgment of the episode. Download numbers are absent here on purpose. A feed does not become more real because many apps have fetched it. One valid item with a working audio address is enough for the format to be doing its job. Critique the ideas after you have listened. Do not critique a number you do not have.

When a video is not in the feed

Video and audio diverge for ordinary technical reasons. A publisher can upload a video to YouTube and never put that video in the podcast feed. A publisher can put an audio file in the feed and never upload a video. A publisher can do both for one episode and only one of those for the next. The confirmed overlap for this show, in this reference, is the episode What Decision Are You Actually Trying to Make?, which has a Podbean page, a Spotify page, and a YouTube video. That overlap is specific. It does not create a rule that every future video will be in the feed, and it does not create a rule that the feed contains only what YouTube shows.

When you are checking whether something is “on the podcast,” define the test. On the podcast, for an app, means an item in the feed the app follows, or an episode the hosting platform lists for the show. On the channel means a video on the YouTube channel. On the website means a page on this site or on the host’s site. Suneet Singal can be on the channel without that particular video being on the podcast. Say the narrower thing. Readers can follow a narrow claim. They cannot repair a broad one without redoing your research.

If you are the person publishing, the practical question is which button actually writes an item into the feed. The hosting provider’s documentation answers it, and Apple’s requirements page answers what must be true of that item if you want Apple’s listing to accept it. This entry is not that documentation. It is a warning against assuming that a successful YouTube upload was a podcast release. Check the show page. If the episode is there, you have a public episode page to cite. If it is not, you have a video. Both can be worth a listener’s time. They are cited differently.

How to talk about the feed without guessing its address

Talk about the feed as a role, not as a URL you almost remember. You can say: podcast apps subscribe to an RSS feed, the show pages for The Opportunity Notebook are on Podbean and Spotify, and the feed address, if you need it, should be copied from the host or from the app. That paragraph is true without a guessed address. You can say Apple publishes podcast requirements that describe what a feed must contain for that directory. You can link those requirements. You can link the episode pages. You have now told the truth to a listener, a student, and a publisher, in different doses, without fabricating a technical detail.

Refuse the details you do not have. No invented publish dates. No invented download counts. No invented episode list beyond the episode this site actually names, plus a clear statement that a second YouTube video is not confirmed as a feed item. No invented claim that Suneet Singal personally edits XML. Hosts and hosting companies divide that work in ways a listener cannot see from a player. Say what the public pages show. Point to Apple’s page for the standard. Point to the episode for the listening. The feed can stay a precise idea instead of a precise-looking fiction, which is all a feed was ever supposed to be: a list an app can trust because the publisher, not the rumor, wrote it.

What this entry does not claim

Suneet Singal’s published professional background is in real estate and corporate finance. Company filings linked from this site record a chief executive officer departure from FC Global Realty Incorporated effective 2 January 2018 and an acting chief executive officer appointment at First Capital Investment Corporation effective 12 September 2017. The Suneet Singal Scholarship, Grant and Giving websites describe him as the founder of those programs. This entry explains a general subject. It is not a private track record, a current job title, an investment result, or a quote.

See also how to cite a podcast episode, long-form audio and short video, and a host, a show, and a channel.