Yesterday, Apple sent an email to podcast publishers, encouraging us to use secure podcast feeds with SSL certificates:

In the future, a secure feed will be required in order to access Podcast Analytics and submit podcasts in Podcasts Connect. Most major hosting services offer secure RSS feeds, and can help you migrate your feed if the one you’re currently using does not have an SSL certificate.

This is part of a much larger trend towards encrypting the entire web. If you don’t know why encryption matters, Mozilla has a great explainer.

Apple has supported secure feeds since early 2016, but their most recent note suggests they plan to drop support for non-secure feeds, though it’s not clear when that will happen. It’s also unclear what might happen to podcasts that don’t update to secure feeds.

How many shows need to update their feeds?

In September 2016, I noted that:

Only 11 of the top 200 shows (5.5%) use HTTPS for their podcast XML. The remaining 189 feeds use plain old HTTP.

More recently, James Cridland of podnews found that:

Of the current Apple Podcast top 10 trending podcasts in the US, only 40% have secure RSS feeds.

This morning, I took a list of ~250,000 podcast series from Apple Podcasts, and analyzed how many of them use secure RSS feeds:

Of the 246,175 shows I could find in Apple Podcasts with registered RSS feeds, only 17% use HTTPS. The vast majority (83%) are still running over old-fashioned HTTP.

That’s a lot of podcasts with feeds that’ll need to be updated.

What are podcasters supposed to do?

If your podcast’s RSS feed isn’t already secure, you should take the necessary steps to move to HTTPS now. Depending on your hosting provider, the switch could be quick and easy, or time-consuming and cumbersome.

A few things to keep in mind:

• James Cridland built a helpful tool to check whether your podcast feed is secure. Search for your show here, then hit the more info button.
• If you’re not technically-minded, your best bet is to reach out to your podcast hosting provider. At Pacific Content, we use FeedPress and Simplecast for RSS and audio hosting. Both services support HTTPS.
• Stay in control. Own your podcast feed.

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