Finally YouTube podcasts is officially here.
Google is integrating podcasts into YouTube Music instead of releasing a separate app for them. The company has announced that the support for podcasts on the YouTube Music app is being rolled out in the United States. This move comes after YouTube launched a podcasts platform on the web called youtube.com/podcasts last year.
Although YouTube Music has received criticism for its limited functionality that requires payment for features like background and offline playback, Google has stated that these features will be available for free when it comes to podcast listening, emphasizing that the podcast listening experience will differ from the music listening experience.
Although people have been uploading podcasts on YouTube unofficially for a long time, it seems easy to join the official track, even for old content. YouTube treats podcasts as video playlists that have a “podcast” flag. Creators can tag their existing playlists as podcasts in YouTube Studio, which will enable episodes to appear on the podcast pages and in the YouTube Music app. Adding new content to an existing podcast playlist during upload is also straightforward. The only condition is that a specific square podcast thumbnail must be included. Currently, uploading audio via RSS feeds is not supported, but Google says this feature will be available in the future.
According to Google, podcast promotion will soon be available on the “Home” and “Explore” pages of the YouTube Music app, and the screenshots show various popular shows and episodes, as well as different categories that users can browse. However, YouTube Premium users will still have to listen to podcast ads, and there is currently no option to pay for ad-free podcasts. The company plans to expand podcast availability to other countries in the future. The fate of Google’s current podcast app, Google Podcasts, is still unknown, but it may eventually be discontinued. This is Google’s fourth attempt at entering the podcasting market, following Google Listen (2009-2012), Google Play Music Podcasts (2016-2020), and Google Podcasts (2018).
