Description
The intent of this proposal is to provide a tag that explicitly spells out the medium of the content contained within the feed.
The medium of a feed is a characterization of content in a culturally significant manner primarily for the purpose of content separation and secondarily to provide high level hints and the organization of the content.
This helps solve the Is-About problem, where a category on its own is otherwise too ambiguous.
- <podcast:medium>[Medium Name]</podcast:medium>
Channel (optional | single)
This element defines a channel medium. One may be defined per channel.
This tag tells an application what the content contained within the feed is, as opposed to what the content is about in the case of a category.
Accepted medium names are curated within a list maintained by the community as new mediums are discovered over time. Newly proposed mediums should require some level of justification to be added to this list. One may argue and/or prove use of a new medium even for only one application, should it prove different enough from existing mediums to have meaning.
[Medium Name] (optional) The medium name that describes the content of the channel. If this tag is not defined, the medium should default to "podcast".
This list is currently a non-exhaustive proposal and subject to change
podcast- Describes a feed for a podcast show.- Justification: Nothing new, as this is what all podcasts that exist default to today.
music- A feed of music organized into an "album" with each item a song within the album.- Justification: Music has existed as a medium for a very long time and dedicated music applications already exist.
video- Like a "podcast" but used in a more visual experience- Justification: Videos add different enough level of user experience to discern them from regular podcasts. Sites like YouTube already exist and prove out the existence of "videos" as a medium.
film- Specific types of videos with one item per feed.- Justification: While doable, users have come to expect to be able to search for films without directly subscribing to a high level organization of "channels." This allows the application to make beneficial assumptions regarding how to handle an item within a film. Films exist as a medium already with dedicated applications today.
audiobook- Specific types of audio with one item per feed.- Justification: Similar to a film, users typically search for audiobooks by name without some level of subscription/following. This isn't to say that an application couldn't allow following an "author," for example, but that wouldn't be organized at the channel level. Audiobooks exist as a medium already with dedicated applications today.
New tags may need to be defined over time to make newly discovered mediums useful. That is not in scope for this proposal.
Example use for a "podcast":
<podcast:medium>podcast</podcast:medium>
Example use for "music":
<podcast:medium>music</podcast:medium>
Related, but perhaps too technical to be able to solve this problem: Proposal: <podcast:format>. A medium is higher level and doesn't attempt to solve more than one unrelated issue.