Podcast that plays in web, but not mobile

MAveryWeirMAveryWeir Member
in Bugs

Howdy! As the title suggests, I have a podcast that plays just fine in the browser version of Asti.ga and other podcatchers (and has for a couple years), but will not download in the Android app ("Downloading - 0 B"). I am able to play other podcasts in the app.

This is a podcast that I'm the cohost and editor of, so I can talk in detail about the implementation of the RSS feed. I was poking at the web/app position syncing and noticed these issues that I suspect are related to how Astiga is processing feeds. I know there are two minor technical oddities about this podcast that might be related here:

  1. The audio enclosure URL will redirect -- maybe the mobile app won't follow a 307 redirect?
  2. The enclosure length in the feed is set to 0 -- this is definitely a "warning" (not an error) in some podcast feed validators, but has not caused a problem until now and doesn't in the browser version. Does the mobile app insist on using the enclosure length field?

Lastly, the browser player will pick up on the cover art of the podcast when searching for it ("Future Proof Podcast"), but once it's subscribed, it falls back to the default "empty" Astiga image on both browser and mobile. I'm not sure if that's because something is erroring out as part of the above feed/audio issue.

Comments

  • KoenKoen Member, Former

    The podcast search uses iTunes' podcast library, and also the imagery Apple provides. Once a podcast is added, it uses the art attribute for the podcast itself (or for the episode, if available). As that one appears to be empty, it defaults to the "no image" placeholder.

    Regarding the other points: both should not be an issue, and from what I tested, it seems to work fine for me:

    Untitled Image


  • MAveryWeirMAveryWeir Member

    Very weird--there must be something going on with my phone. I haven't been able to get it to play even after restarting the phone and clearing the app cache through Android.

    Thank you for the clarity around the images. The feed has a root-level <itunes:image> tag that isn't getting picked up by Astiga (and does by Apple, hence the search result appearance), but not a regular <image> tag. Other non-Apple players (PocketCast, etc.) must be falling back to the namespaced tag, but it's understandable not to do so.

    So yeah, I think that closes out these concerns. Thank you!

Sign In or Register to comment.