During the last New Media Show, Todd Cochrane CEO of Blubrry & Rob Greenlee  of Libsyn discussed the need to form a coalition to expand RSS as a community which would include Hosting Companies, App Developers and Podcasters to develop a list of new tags and elements to expand the functionality of RSS.

They aren’t talking about changing the existing spec only expanding it, and as a community come together to develop a list of new tags that can be supported.

Many years Blubrry introduced a handful of tags that even to this day have not received wide adoption as companies did not want to be seen supporting blubrry initiatives. So the only approach is a community approach to this.

For those of you that do not understand elements and tags. Imagine having a tag that links to your transcript.

<podcast-transcript>

Or how about one for Merchandise.

<podcast-merchandise>

These are only two of many examples. If a coalition of hosting companies, app developers, Apple, Google & Podcasters all agree to support these new tags and elements. It is hoped that they can really bring some needed expansion to what will be available in the metadata of a feed. Without breaking the current open RSS standard we all rely on.

They are going to try and have an in-person kick-off meeting at the Podcast Movement Evolutions event in Feb Where they will layout for community discussion the proposed new podcast specific tags. They will seek input from all parties and as a group try to come to a consensus. This effort will be a waste of time they admit without Podcast App Developers, Hosting Companies and Podcaster weigh in. Of course, there is hope that Apple / Google will support a podcast community coalition initiative. I

If you would like to be involved they have formed a slack channel for the community to discuss and organize. To participate send an email to with todd@blubrry.com or robg@libsyn.com and we will get you an invite to the new slack channel. This again is a community initiative so we hope you will participate but someone has to step up and get the ball rolling.

If you want to listen to the discussion it begins at 25:27