Proposal: podcast:storefront & JSON spec

[nathangathright]

Purpose

Merch has long been a way for listeners to show their support for their favorite podcasters and musicians. As Spotify and Amazon Music incorporate product storefronts into their listening apps, I wanted to explore what it would take to bring that innovation to the podcasting ecosystem. As I’m imagining it, feeds could link to a JSON file of products with links to complete the purchase via the web.

Parent

<channel>

Count

Single

Attributes

• url: (required) A URL pointing to a JSON file.

Example

<podcast:storefront url="https://example.com/12345678/merch.json"/>

---

JSON Format

This is the initial spec for a JSON format that can be referenced in an RSS feed using the <podcast:storefront/> tag. This file can reside on any publicly accessible URL. This file should be served with a Content-Type of application/json and a Access-Control-Allow-Origin header set to *.

JSON Keys

• version: (required - string) The version number of the format.
• storefront: (required - array)
  • title: (required - string)
  • description: (required - string)
  • link: (required - string)
  • image: (required - string)

Example

{
  "version": "1.0.0",
  "storefront": [
    {
      "title": "ATP Monochrome Shirt",
      "description": "The ATP logo shirt in several fun colors.",
      "link": "https://cottonbureau.com/p/ZREXJY/shirt/atp-monochrome",
      "image": "https://cottonbureau.com/p/ZREXJY/shirt/atp-monochrome/image.jpg"
    },
    {
      "title": "ATP Hat",
      "description": "Let the proud ATP logo protect your head from the harmful rays of the sun.",
      "link": "https://cottonbureau.com/p/DEQQPB/hat/atp-hat",
      "image": "https://cottonbureau.com/p/DEQQPB/hat/atp-hat/image.jpg"
    },
    {
      "title": "ATP Enamel Pin",
      "description": "The classic ATP logo pin, now with a locking pin back.",
      "link": "https://cottonbureau.com/p/GXUGXR/pin/atp-enamel-pin",
      "image": "https://cottonbureau.com/p/GXUGXR/pin/atp-enamel-pin/image.jpg"
    }
  ]
}

[theDanielJLewis]

I like the idea. What about in the (likely) absence of the correctly formatted JSON? Could we simply link to the storefront?

I recommend allowing multiple uses of the tag and with text, allowing for the multiple storefronts podcasters might have. Plus, a provider (or similar) attribute could help for icons, branding, or even an abbreviated version of multiple buttons.

For example:

<podcast:storefront url="https://stickermule.com/mystore" provider="Sticker Mule">Make your stuff awesome with our stickers</podcast:storefront>
<podcast:storefront url="https://teepublic.com/mystore" provider="TeePublic">Be instantly sexy in our tees!</podcast:storefront>
<podcast:storefront url="https://amazon.com/mystore"provider="Amazon">Buy my sock collection</podcast:storefront>

Then, a podcast app could display a button for each storefront and use the full CTA text, or it could read the "provider" field to match to simple icon-only buttons under something like "Podcast swag."

That idea of grouping them makes me wonder if there should be a parent element wrapping them and that could include the title of the group of links and maybe an optional description.

[nathangathright]

In my opinion, the existing funding tag is sufficient to cover the majority of what these changes might achieve.

• Podcasters can include multiple per channel/item
• Apps can identify the provider by parsing the hostname from the URL
• Apps can display links from known storefront domains with icons in a dedicated storefront area.

If correctly-formatted JSON is too burdensome, then this tag shouldn’t exist at all. But I think many hosts could facilitate an "add your merch" UI that results in a storefront on their host-generated websites and a JSON file in their feeds.