Podcast images appear cropped in Spotify (from WordPress feed)

  • Unknown's avatar
    depalmation · Member ·

    Hi, we have a podcast for which we have our feed loaded in WordPress.

    The issue we could not fix so far is related to the images being shown in Spotify: they appear cropped no matter what in the podcast episode page and if you click in any single episode.

    – Our original images are 640×640 .PNG images.

    – We tried a 3000×3000 PNG image for the last uploaded episode to see if the issue was related to image resolution, however the image is still cropped.

    Do you know how we can fix this issue with the cropped images? Is there any special check or option we are missing when loading our featured images?

    Thanks!

  • staff-totoro · Staff ·

    Hi there,

    Do you have a link to where I can view this on spotify to see how images are being cropped now? Thanks for the additional info!

  • Unknown's avatar
    depalmation · Member ·

    Hi there!

    Sure, here is the link to our podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/6mvd2vMQJIWalHqAtV3NNV

    You will see all images appear cropped.

    Last episode image is 3000×3000 PNG, the rest of them are 640×640 PNG

    Thank you!!

  • fstat · Staff ·

    Hi there,

    The images on your site do not appear cropped on my end. Can you please take a screenshot of what you’re seeing and upload it to your Media Library so I can have a look?

    Here’s how to take a screenshot:

    Take a Screenshot

  • Unknown's avatar
    depalmation · Member ·

    Hi! I took two screenshots, one from my PC and the other one from my phone. They are both in my Media Library now:

    desktop_view.png
    smartphone_view.png

    Thanks!

  • fstat · Staff ·

    Ah, my bad. I thought you were referring to how the images appear on your site. As far as I know, Spotify crops images even if they are square. So you need to reach out to them and ask them for more information.

  • Unknown's avatar
    depalmation · Member ·

    Hi there again!

    I contacted Spotify and they told me there is crop attribute stated for the episode images listed in my feed.

    They used the following as an example within the feed:

    The image for Depalmation S01.E10 – Carrie: “Sissy, Spacek por acá” is:

    <itunes:image href=’https://depalmation.files.wordpress.com/2019/08/e10_carrie-1.png?w=740&h=430&crop=1′ />

    They suggested I should remove this crop attribute (which I do not remember setting it up at all) for the images to show correctly.

    I looked at the feed and it seems every image has this crop attribute set on 1 (TRUE)

    How can I remove this crop attribute?

    Thanks!

  • staff-totoro · Staff ·

    Hi again,

    Do you not offer your podcast on iTunes? I searched for “Depalmation” but did not see it there. Are you offering your podcast on Spotify only for now?

    If you do not plan to offer your podcast on iTunes I recommend removing the setting here: https://wordpress.com/settings/writing/depalmation.wordpress.com

    Click to view image

    To clarify, your feed address (https://depalmation.wordpress.com/category/podcast/feed/) will still work fine for Spotify, but removing the feed from our itunes setting should remove the itunes meta including the crop attribute.

    Hope this helps!

  • Unknown's avatar
    depalmation · Member ·

    Hi again!

    We are not offering our podcast on iTunes, at least for now.

    However, how can I leave that field blank? Because by clicking on ‘Disable Podcast’ at the bottom the podcast was just removed and could not be found on Spotify anymore. And I can’t just delete the feed URL in that box.

    Is there any way I can manually edit the feed? Because I feel everything can be solved by setting the attribute “crop” from 1 to 0.

    Thanks!

  • kokkieh · Staff ·

    Hi there,

    You’re correct that you can’t remove that feed URL. It is set automatically based on the podcast category you select, and is used by all podcast providers, not just iTunes.

    That is not the problem here.

    I can also see that crop argument in the image URL in the podcast feed, but I can’t figure out where it’s coming from – looking at the code that generates the podcast feed on our end, it doesn’t specify any cropping for the post image, so I wonder if it might be your theme.

    I’m asking our podcasting experts to take a look at this and will let you know what we find.

    Meanwhile, would you be willing to submit your feed to Apple Podcasts or Google Play to see if the same cropping happens there? You can always remove the feed from those platforms again afterwards, once we’ve been able to take a look.

  • kokkieh · Staff ·

    Hi again :)

    It looks like it’s your theme that’s causing this.

    I’m able to replicate this same cropping issue on a test site if I use the Independent Publisher 2 theme you have, but if I switch to the default Twenty Twenty theme, that cropping parameter disappears, and the image is no longer cropped.

    I’ve reported this to our themes team, but I’m not able to give you any indication on how long this might take to fix, so for now the only way to prevent this is to change to a different theme.

  • Unknown's avatar
    depalmation · Member ·

    Hi!

    That was it!! Yes, I changed my theme to the Twenty Twenty and it looks just fine now! I don’t know how I did not think about trying another theme earlier!

    Thank you so much for all the assistance team! :)

  • kokkieh · Staff ·

    I don’t know how I did not think about trying another theme earlier!

    What theme you’re using shouldn’t have an effect on your site’s RSS feed, so this is actually a very weird bug. So you can forgive yourself for not thinking to do that :)

    But I’m glad if another theme works for you.

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