Echo & Alexa Forums

How to make Echo (and other devices) aware of iTunes/TuneIn listed podcasts?

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talkingnews

Here in the UK we're trying to allow blind listeners to hear the podcast of their local weekly talking newspaper via various methods, including Cortana, Amazon Echo and Google Home.

There are several of these, all registered with itunes and also tunein. You can find some of these by searching the words "talking newspaper".

Even when I give the exact podcast name, the other two services say "I'm afraid I can't play the <podcast name> podcast yet", while Cortana says, in response to "play the Adam Buxton podcast" (in the top 100 podcasts):

"*You're the adam buxton playlist on...I couldn't find that song*".

Weird response!

I won't post a link in case it's seen as spamming, but if, for example, you google "kingston talking newspaper" you will find the page with the xml links, player etc.

Are there any tags, structured markup or other places we should be submitting in order to be able to be more easily searched and played devices like Cortana, Alexa (Echo and Echo dot), Google Home etc?

Again, to re-iterate before someone says "copy and paste the URL into your podcatcher", this service is mainly aimed and blind and partially sighted people and voice search is key here for standalone devices with zero setup.

Thank you.

strayfish

I'd be interested to hear if there's a solution to that too. I contacted the RNIB recently about their audio book library and they're looking into making it available via the Alexa software but I didn't ask about talking newspapers. Our local council (in Sussex, UK) has a tech group whose aim is to find ways of integrating technology into the lifestyles of people with vulnerabilities and dependencies. Social isolation is a key issue they're addressing and we have been talking about these products particularly for their hands-free capabilities. Not much good when it responds as bizarrely as is sometimes the case though!