Angelo,
A few things -- first, the new episodes today were indeed part of changes made this morning, so it might have been a bit simpler to discuss the examples prior to today. However, I hope I can clarify on a few points:
1. The podcast is on iTunes called "Runtime", same as on Blubrry. It has been on iTunes since the beginning of January and is still there now. Just search on "Runtime" -- it's there. Note that iTunes cache hasn't yet updated, so even though the underlying feed is right, the episodes aren't yet showing on the iTunes web pages. You can, however, subscribe to the podcast and download the episodes correctly. So haven't some familiarity with the workings of iTunes myself, that I believe is just a function of the iTunes Store cache that hasn't updated yet, but when you subscribe, you are actually working off of the live RSS feed. Here's the URL to the podcast on iTunes:
http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/runtime/id4926676682. From your post below, the 2nd URL was the actually the first submission, then it was changed to the 1st URL (this was just moving the same episode to a different URL). That should be apparent by the dates shown in the URL path. But here is where it gets really weird. The 2nd URL was actually changed to a 3rd URL, as follows:
http://www.bighillsoftware.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Runtime-Trailer.mp3In addition, BOTH of the previous URLs, URL 1 and URL 2 from your email, were deleted entirely from our web site, feed, and iTunes. Neither the URLs nor the files themselves can be accessed on the web site or in our RSS feed -- they simply do not exist anymore. And even beyond this, I went into the "current posts / episodes" view and deleted the original episode:
2nd url:
http://www.bighillsoftware.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/Runtime-Trailer.mp3However -- and here's the rub -- this deleted episode above, for which no URL existed, nor which was valid on iTunes, on our web site, nor in our RSS feed, showed in the Blubrry media statistics view, AND continued to accumulate stats over the entire month of January. Based on what you've told me, this should be impossible -- this didn't exist, not on iTunes, not on our web site, not in our RSS feed, nor on Blubrry's list of episodes for our podcast. Yet there it continued to show in statistics (and still continues to show -- in fact, both Runtime-Trailer-V3.mp3 and Runtime-Trailer.mp3 still show in my stats, even though neither one show as podcast episodes. And additionally, the URL which existed for nearly the whole month of January, which was the only thing in the RSS feed, on our web site, and on iTunes which anyone could actually download:
http://www.bighillsoftware.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Runtime-Trailer.mp3it never appeared. Now today, we had to submit a new episode, and due to some other constraints we had to change the hosting of both episodes under the hood, so there's now 2 episodes showing in the podcast episodes. But neither of those show in stats, and as already stated, the only thing that shows in stats are episodes which don't exist on our end, or in the Blubrry podcasts/episodes view.
3. As for caching with URL changes -- I understand the issue of caching and refreshing feeds. iTunes usually takes a few hours to a day. The changes we made this morning are already live now on the feed served by iTunes, but the iTunes web pages haven't updated yet. However, URL changes NEVER updated on Blubrry over the course of the entire month of January. The third URL should have shown, never did. The first one should have dropped off entirely, and the second one I would have expected would have eventually changed.
Anyway, I hope that clarifies things. I do appreciate your explanation and I am following your explanation, but I do believe that something is amiss here. Any more light you can shed would be welcome.
Brad
