Google Podcasts heads to an upstate farm run by Marc Maron and Sarah Koenig, The app has been round since 2018, nevertheless it’s by no means come near the sort of mass adoption loved by rivals Overcast, Spotify, and Spotify. In different phrases, do not feel dangerous in case you’ve by no means heard of it.
Your entire service is built-in into YouTube and its companion app YouTube Music. That is for good motive, as YouTube is already a well-liked vacation spot for podcast followers. In accordance with statistics supplied by Edison Analysis and… YouTube serves 23 p.c of podcast listeners in the USA. Google Podcasts, then again, accounts for less than 4 p.c of listeners, regardless of having podcasts proper within the identify. It is simpler to select up stakes and head to the place the fish are than it’s to attempt to lure fish to a random podcast app that nobody is aware of about.
YouTube introduced that 2024 will see a major improve in its “funding within the podcast expertise,” proper after guardian firm Alphabet put the kibosh on Google’s devoted app. And it seems to be like YouTube Music will get the lion’s share of those investments, with upcoming “highly effective creation and evaluation instruments,” in addition to streamlined RSS uploads for podcasters.
The corporate can be promising to broaden the power to hearken to podcasts in additional areas, noting that they are going to be out there “in every single place YouTube Music listeners already devour their favourite content material — within the background, within the automotive, offline, and extra.” Moreover, new “YouTube-only” instruments and capabilities might be coming to podcasts on YouTube Music, although Google stays coy concerning the particulars.
As for current Google Podcasts customers, there might be a “easy migration instrument” to assist with the transition to YouTube Music. You will additionally be capable to manually add podcast RSS feeds to your YouTube Music library. The corporate even introduced choices so as to add current podcast subscriptions to competing platforms, in case you simply wish to begin over. Google remains to be gathering suggestions on the migration, so a few of these options are topic to alter earlier than subsequent yr.
This is not the primary huge transfer YouTube Music has taken this yr to shore up a few of that candy podcast cash. Again in April, the app launched the power to observe and hearken to podcasts, although you continue to battle with that YouTube Music podcasts are already full-featured, with offline downloading, background playback, and the power to change between audio and video content material on sensible audio system.