Google Podcasts to shut down in 2024
techcrunch.comWe have gone full circle. I started with Google Music which had both music and podcasts at the time. Then they took podcasts out of Google Music and made me install a second Google Podcast app just to listen to my podcasts. Then they shut down Google Music and forced me to move to YouTube Music. Now they are shutting down Google Podcasts and integrating that back into YouTube Music. Like WTF.
It's amazing how incompetent they seem in this area. They even shut down another podcast app before your journey began, called Google listen.
Luckily, although you might want Google's proprietary music player to access their subscription content, there's absolutely no reason to use a Google podcast app. I am a fan of Antennapod[0], which is available on F-Droid.
> t's amazing how incompetent they seem in this area
You may be surprised at how competent they look internally. If I were a betting man, I'd say each of those transitions went into a promotion/performance packet. I count at least 3 product teams competent at developing podcast features, and were likely rewarded for it.
The only successful products I can think of from Google that were entirely of their own making are Google Search, GMail, and Chrome. Their other successes all came from acquisitions, like YouTube, Maps (KeyHole), Docs (Writely), Android, etc. They deserve some credit for their cultivation and maintenance of these products, but they did not create them.
Chrome was based on Webkit, which I think was associated with the K Desktop Environment project.
Webkit is a fork of KHTML (part of Konqueror from KDE) created by Apple.
Their main product is ads
And to their credit, they are remarkably good at projectile vomiting that garbage all across the internet
And the acquisition of Doubleclick was very helpful for that product...
Give product team competent at maintaining podcast features ( o ´ ･ _ ･ ) っ
Oh man, wait until you hear how incompetent they are at messaging apps.
And health apps
And TV apps - Google TV, Android TV, YouTube TV.
The one thing they got right was Chromecast. And they ruined it with a stupid remote and interactive UI while still using underpowered hardware. I use a Shield TV now.
benefit of google podcasts compared to antennapod is that with google podcasts I can start a podcast on one device and later continue where I left off on another device (e.g. listen on mobile then switch to desktop).
I don't use this functionality myself and can't vouch for it, but have you looked into the synchronization options? It seems as if it should be possible. They support self-hosting as well. [0]
[0] https://antennapod.org/documentation/general/synchronization
thanks. gPodder seems to be the missing piece.
That's much better than Google Podcasts, thanks!
This must be the first time those words have been used in that order. I suspect possibly also the last.
Antennapod is the a major reason why I haven't moved to an iPhone.
Antennapod is also available on Android.
F-Droid is an Android app store, yes. You can install it on every Android device.
Google Music / Play was the best thing they built imho. Was really sad to see it go.
Agreed. Dead simple, supported local files, and you could upload your own music collection.
YT Music is absolute garbage for anyone who cares about music. It's impossible to manage a library.
After Reader. Best after Reader.
I loved Google Play music. Used it for years. Switched to Spotify when they shut it down and I don't particularly like Spotify, but I have enough custom playlists on there now I'm probably not going to switch unless something forces me to
100% agreed. I was a paying customer for years, but finally switched to Apple Music when Google shut it down. A significant downgrade, IMO, but not as bad as YouTube Music at the time.
Gotta launch (and shut down) to get promos!
This is what really annoys me. For certain there will be people at g noticing this constant bouncing about so that some pointless product manager can get their promotion and bonus. They are noticing the damage this does to them. And it's even possible they are highlighting it. But they are completely unable to do anything about it.
Bingo. This is the reason. The higherups that approve promos are mostly tech-illiterate, so if you're a manager that oversees maintenance/fix work that isn't new and shiny and sexy and dressed up with marketing, you're never getting promoted and neither are your reports.
Tbh I think the moves make sense to a certain degree. Users like apps focused on specific experiences so if a user group is big enough or growing enough it makes sense to cater to that. Podcasts were briefly looking promising so spinning them off into a separate product probably seemed like an easy way of acquiring users who only cared about podcasts. Now it's the present though and it turns out podcast momentum was a shortlived trend in terms of commercial relevance and that a completely separate app is a waste of resources. Sorry to be harsh to the podcast fans but in reality I'm amazed they even preserved them at all when there's no shortage of podcast content published to YouTube already because of its reach. If people are already cross-promoting that much anyway you may as well just merge them over.
Full circle is splitting it off again to Google Listen. Either way I wanted to migrate to podcasts for a couple years but they never had opml support. I just hope they might take it slightly more serious now, add some playlists and transcription since it's part of youtube. But knowing Google.
Google executive leaders must have been worried that users might start trusting Google's apps again, so hatched this plan to maintain Google's well-known reputation.
When looking at business leaders, it's best to assume scary competence and that they always know what they're doing. After all, if they weren't impossibly better than us mere mortals, why would the market have granted them such high-paid CEO jobs?
The way they keep killing apps (affects android) and the way they killed their line of pixel laptops is the primary reason why I will not be migrating off of the iPhone/Mac continuity combo anytime soon. I really like when my apps and services don’t get canceled and when a lot of them just kinda work consistently across the two computers I use most. Can’t get that from google and Microsoft gave up on phones so…
I really like the simplicity of Google Podcasts, it does one thing and pretty well.
I'm also a Spotify user and despise have podcasts mixed with music, so bloated and clunky (also Spotify performance isn't good), music and podcasts are different usecases for me, I'm on different mood.
I don't want to jump to YouTube Music, and the last time I did a research, I can't find a simple Podcast app that is free, simple, ad-free, and has desktop web+native phone app support like Google Podcasts.
I guess I have to have to pay _other_ subscription now :/. Will try YouTube Music but I'm quite sure will not like it.
Note aside: I have YouTube Premium subscription for the ad-free experience, and has YouTube Music included, but to listen to music I prefer Spotify Premium _only_ because has a desktop app, I just can't have Spotify on my browser tabs, and since I use Firefox I can't install the pwa-webapp. If I can have installed the desktop app/pwa-webapp I'm sure I will dich Spotify for sure. Sorry for the unrelated rant but I just remember that.
I think the point about separation of Music and Podcasts is an important one for me as well.
I really don't like mixing the two, they have two different use cases imo. Drives me nuts how much Spotify pushes podcasts when I just want to listen to some tunes.
I once tapped on a podcast link that someone sent me that opened in Spotify. I was haunted by podcast recommendations for months, if not years afterwards. I honestly wouldn't care if there was a completely separate tab in the app that didn't influence recommendations.
I’ve suffered through it just like you. I recently reinstalled Overcast after using Castro for quite a while. But, I’m still not completely satisfied with any of these apps.
I actually prefer that Spotify have both podcasts and music in their app. I would be more annoyed if I had to use a separate app for the two use cases. In my view, both are audio entertainment, so it makes sense. I can see how this would annoy some people though.
Spotify thinks if they can get you into Podcasts, which they don’t have to pay a dime for, it will improve their bottom line, since you (probably) can’t simultaneously listen to music that they do have to pay for. Kind of a funny motivation to enter the podcast market, but probably a good business move, as awkward and annoying, and seemingly irrelevant to their brand and core competency as it is.
That's a fascinating way of looking at it that I've never thought about before. So basically Spotify is considering cost per minute of music vs. podcasts? That's a believable explanation for the counterintuitively high price they paid for acquiring popular podcasts like Joe Rogan (which they know loyal viewers users will reliably watch for hours each week, during which time they won't be streaming Taylor Swift songs on repeat).
It's also interesting because the normal optimizations like caching don't apply to licensing fees. At first I was going to suggest that they can cache frequently played songs to save cost, but then I realized that has no impact on royalty fees derived from playtime.
You realise that wanting a free and ad-free player will always lead you to this? Why not just pay for a good podcast app?
Any suggestions?
Podcast Addict
Minor question: Why not use the PWA using a different browser engine? Since it’s in its own window anyway. I hear Safari is gaining them this year though I never touch Safari. Edge has it, and Chromium probably does right?
I wholly agree however, that mixing music and podcasts in one app is stupid though!
If by any chance you’re an Apple person, I’d recommend Overcast. It’s a measly $10 or so per year for ad-free but really, anything free is going to either have ads or be tied to some annoying larger monetization strategy like Apple or Google have. So I don’t think it’s worth putting “free” in your criteria.
Sure, I can answer your question :) Tes, I tried to use YouTube Music with Chrome since it supports PWA installation, but it wasn't a good experience, the browser get synced with my Google Account and I don't like it, also my keyboard keys to change volume and tracks didn't work (with the Spotify app they work), maybe now they work, I know that PWA support in Chromium was pushed and evolving a lot recently.
Maybe I should try other chromium-based browser just for that, but also don't feel to have logged in my Google Account in other browser (if YTM has a desktop native app will be similar haha but IDK), hope Firefox desktop at some point support PWA installations. And maybe I'm old, but for products that I interact all day (spotify, figma, slack) I just like native desktop apps detached from browsers, even if they are Electron apps which are essentially a webapp wrapper.
About the Overcast suggestion, I'm a Windows/Ubuntu/Android person, I guess Overcast isn't for me, but I'm willing to pay $10/year for a product like Google Podcasts, I will look for products soon.
Also, Google Podcasts is free and ad-free, I never even see a promoted podcasts or something like that. But than can be one reason why Google shut it down. Google Keep is similar, simple, free and ad-free, I love it, hope they don't shut it down!
Yeah, it's also well integrated with Android Auto and I want a focused and easy to navigate app on the rare occasion I need to queue up a new podcast.
Podurama is this
HN moderators: why was title changed from more accurate "Google Podcasts to shut down in 2024 with listeners migrated to YouTube Music" to misleading "Google Podcasts to shut down in 2024" ?
This title was most charitable as rolling anything into YouTube is a fate worse than death.
"Google Podcasts to shut down in 2024" isn't misleading, that's exactly what's happening. The fact that they're trying to force people onto YouTube Music isn't relevant for me.
That's an utterly strange response - it's a difference between UI just moving somewhere else and losing service availability.
It sounds like you just want to rant?
Google Podcasts, the app (and website?) is shutting down. It will no longer exist. Re-framing it as its UI moving somewhere else is a bit like if WhatsApp was to be shuttered and moved to Facebook Messenger, and you said "it's not becoming unavailable, its UI is being moved to to Facebook Messenger".
Except for some exclusive podcasts, which Google has zero, podcasts are an open standard. Google Podcasts is just one of many clients, so there was never a worry of service availability. All podcast apps except Spotify are just different UI.
Podcasts are already in YTM though. Nothing’s moving. They’re killing off a product, plain and simple. Whether that’s no big deal or a big deal is up to every individual. I am assuming anybody who wanted to use YTM for podcasts already is, and it’s not a stretch to say people will probably be annoyed.
YTM has podcasts only in the US, though.
This announcement is quite frustrating elsewhere, since we have no idea how good or bad YTM is for Podcast
> The fact that they're trying to force people onto YouTube Music isn't relevant for me.
With all due respect, it's probably relevant to other people.
Arguably it’s no more relevant than is the fact that there are a dozen other podcast apps out there. The podcast feature in YTM already exists and is distinct.
This change means X number of people need to go looking for some alternative, and given Google’s lack of ability to keep any product alive long-term besides Gmail, YouTube, and Search, YTM should arguably be the absolute last one on your list to consider, since we all know it (or its podcast section) will be replaced with something else within the next five years, just like nearly every Google product.
The HN title has always been the current one, nobody changed anything here. When I wrote the title, I was actually about to post another link (https://www.androidpolice.com/google-podcasts-discontinued-a...), but I would rather not write “will die in” (as used in the headline of Android Police), so I went for “to shut down in”.
To be fair, I just received an email from Google entitled "Google Podcasts is going away". Until I read your post I wasn't aware they were doing this.
Could have been OP btw. You can change the title after making a post
Title length can be a problem
In a year or two somebody would realize that YT is for videos and it doesn't make sense to keep music and podcasts there, and a new Google service is born... It's the circle of life.
The amount of people who use YouTube to listen to music around the world is massive.
I always assumed that the real reason YouTube Music was released was for Google to actually save on bandwidth.
They could actually just roll out a toggle that disables the video for that.
Unpopular opinion: i loved it and used it everyday, sad to see a lightweight app with no BS on any part of the screen die.
I love the balance between simplicity and utility. Ability to download podcasts for later, queue them up into a playlist, cast to a device, easily search through thousands of existing podcasts but able to add the RSS if needed, timeline for recent podcast episodes, etc
Yepp. Google Podcasts hit the right spot in terms of auto playing my next podcast that I don't have with other apps I've used. Managing all podcasts across devices made switching phones seamless. I'll actually miss it.
But I've wanted to switch to a more open option so I'll have to figure those things out elsewhere.
Same here, I switched from apple podcasts after their home re-organization that ruined the experience for me. Guess I should have known better.
Try Pocket Casts, that’s where I went from Apple Podcasts and haven’t looked back.
Same here, now will either have to find something similar, or go back to downloading MP3 from RSS feeds.
Google drastically needs portfolio management. The qualifications for this position should be very low, some very basic common sense would do.
I suppose they can get away with all of this because the concept of competing for a customer doesn't really exist at Google. They can toy around without any consequences because they have a money printer.
Also, at Google's current size, anything producing less than 1B in revenue per month is frankly not that interesting. Small stuff.
Google is an advertisement company. Not a tech/app company. Google creates free apps solely on the incentive to gather and sell your data.
I think part of the problem is, almost all their products have been free... launched as free and remained free without clear monetization plan, except to grow userbase.
There was no strong disincentive for pulling the plug on products without paying customers.
For the past few years, they've been trying to 'correct' that and in the process pissing everybody off.
The state of podcasting software is kind of sad now. The initial concept behind podcasts with RSS feeds was so neat and freeing, but podcasts have been reigned into private services due to user convenience and existing market share for audio. Having Spotify handle podcast management for me is great and it's handy but I would much rather have an agnostic app with inputs for RSS feeds. There are just so many podcasts that aren't available via an RSS feed anymore though, continuing to push us into private apps.
I guess I'm not helping but I literally can't for many podcasts now.
> There are just so many podcasts that aren't available via an RSS feed anymore though
If I need a proprietary app to access a show's feed, then IMHO it should not be considered a podcast (and I refuse to listen to it).
That being said, I remain cautiously optimistic about the podcasting ecosystem. A huge number of high-quality shows remain freely available (and many shows sustain an independent revenue stream). Despite the creeping centralization, podcasting still feels very independent when compared to things like Youtube/Tiktok.
Huh? I use Apple Podcasts, and used Google Podcasts before I switched to iPhone. Haven't seen an issue like that. Everything I care about seems to be available on everything, and it's easy to add RSS feeds (e.g. from Patreon) in both apps. Maybe you should try using a less hostile app?
That doesn't refute the original point, though. Apple Podcasts and Google Podcasts are products that embrace the open podcasting model. Spotify and Youtube Music do not, and these are the products that the original comment is referring to, where you are not able to add a subscription using an RSS feed.
> Maybe you should try using a less hostile app?
Great advice.
> Having Spotify handle podcast management for me is great and it's handy but I would much rather have an agnostic app with inputs for RSS feeds.
What about the Spotify app keeps you using it, even though (1) they're a parasitoid on the open podcasting ecosystem and (2) have successfully destroyed the original, open meanings of "podcast" and "podcasting"?
Why anyone would use a proprietary podcasting app is beyond me! (Particularly one from Google with basically had a 100% chance of getting canceled....)
https://antennapod.org/ is incredible! 10/10, highly recommend!
> Why anyone would use a proprietary podcasting app is beyond me!
It's preinstalled on Android. Easy to get started... Defaults are a powerful thing.
Thanks for the recommendation! I was just looking for another app to switch to.
AntennaPod is good if you value FLOSS over UX, but I continue to get my money's worth from https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bambuna.po... (it's IAP, so you don't have to pay to try it)
I just happen to still have my notes where I was evaluating players a while back and here's why I chose Podcast Addict over AntennaPod, with this written from the perspective of "why not AntennaPod"
* auto download should be configurable per podcast, ideally with number of episodes to retain
* auto skip intro, outro seconds should be configurable per podcast
* delete from Queue view doesn't remove it from the queue nor even mark it as played
* ui treatment makes currently playing overlap with the played marker on queue items
* bamboo menu for an episode should offer delete
* delete and remove from queue doesn't clear it from the now playing bar
* it should stop after episode if sleep timer is active <-- this one is a solid, 100% deal breaker for any app that doesn't support it
I had moved from Podcast Addict to Google Podcasts.
PA is slanted way to heavily towards the power user. I just want to see my feed chronologically, pick one and hit play.
I've just tried AntennaPod.
Unless there's some setting I am missing, I think it doesn't let you search for podcast episodes and then play them without subscribing to a podcast. In that respect, Google podcasts is better.
I believe you are correct, since unsubbing from a podcast will likewise delete all episodes associated with that podcast.
Sync between devices. I guess Pocket Casts does that too, but it was also proprietary (and paid) when I started to use Google Podcasts.
Not so much killed as being rolled into YouTube Music
A fate worse than death. (Joke but I was a heavy Google Music user before it suffered the same fate).
Yeah, I also used Play Music a lot (specifically because you could purchase songs and albums). Back in the day I waffled between Play Music and Amazon for buying tracks (I'm not in the Apple ecosystem).
The forced deathmarch to YouTube Music and its advertisement hell was a massive "fuck you" for trusting Google to at least not be assholes if you're buying items from them. I had a huge library of music purchased on Play and nothing worked to backup/download them. All the purchases disappeared in YouTube Music. Google "support" with the issues was... exactly what you would expect.
I didn't get into podcasts until a few years ago during the pandemic. But I refused to ever consider touching Google Podcasts. On the one hand with Google you know the entity you're dealing with so there's a certain ease that the name has vs trusting a different company. But increasingly it's just not worth it. They're like an elephant grazing on the savanna and you're a dung beetle. You can often find that Google shit is usable and useful, but they won't even notice if they step on you. I avoid Google if I can avoid it.
I was a paid Google Music from way back. The best thing about the move to YouTube Music was opening up all kinds of independent tracks and mashups that weren't available in official music catalogs.
I've been on Google Play Music (and now YT Music) for ~8 years. YT Music has a different catalog (by my estimation it's less complete than GPM's was) and also lets you pull up songs/videos from youtube (which can't be downloaded for offline listening like other songs, and are just kind of mixed in with everything else).
Artist and album descriptions are largely gone, and so is the ability to view your listen count of songs, or sort songs in your catalog by listen count (which was my favourite feature of GPM). I suspect they're doing this because they've changed their accounting to get away with paying artists less (the % completion rate to 'count' has changed, or perhaps they're not counting some listens altogether)
The one saving grace of YTM is that its predictive playlists are actually pretty decent, and there are a lot of them.
I can confirm that the catalog is less complete in YTM because back when they shut GPM I took the effort to migrate my playlists and I lost quite a few songs of them in the progress, and even more then within a year (of which YTM can't even tell me the title anymore, it's just an unavailable item)
Yeah, originally GPM actually had the ability to actually upload your whole music library, matchable or not, and let you listen from the cloud. All of that was available without a subscription fee!
I migrated my account too, since I have YT Premium anyway, but I don’t even know if that’s a feature anymore or how to access that aspect of my library, like, to add new songs from MP3s I own.
I agree the content especially from indie folks is a big improvement but man is the presentation and UX horrible.
The way the Google Play Music vs YouTube Music crap played out is the worst (best?) example of "shipping the org chart" I can imagine. I worked at Google at the time, and it was just ridiculous to watch.
What kind of dysfunctional company deathmarches its users like this between two competing brands and products right in its own company, and is so committed to doing it wholesale that it's willing to mass-lose customers as well as features? The kind that puts its internal politics and product manager's careers and ideas ahead of customers' needs.
For at least a year after the transition you couldn't chromecast from YouTube Music on the web. The internal buganizer ticket on the matter was a shitshow. No accountability for the fact that we were killing something that worked and replacing with something that didn't even work with our own products.
Likewise, YTM on Android Auto was a similarly terrible backwards step in user interface and capabilities. It's been some years so I forget what irked me, but there was a laundry list of them.
At one point there were I think 3 Google product places where you could play podcasts; YTM, GPM, and Google Podcasts. None talking with each other about subscriptions, etc.
That and the whole idea of meshing a video recommendation system with a music recommendation system was just busted. My kids watched Minecraft or whatever videos on YouTube on the family (Android) TV So I started getting recommendations in YTM for video game music and what not.
The entire orientation of YouTube is around various random clips and the like. A music service like Spotify or (RIP) GPM is about albums and singles and EPs. YouTube's whole recommendation model wasn't built for it, IMHO.
GPM had a good recommendations engine. YTM pushed top 40 crap on me. I tried to tune it, but it failed.
I'd ask my Google display assistant device (I worked on them and had a couple around the house) to play some music, and it would spool up and start playing a video on YouTube instead. Because clearly that's what I'd want.
Harmonizing product lines and concentrating efforts and changing brands around etc is entirely reasonable. But you don't do it in a way that drops features and pisses off customers. You do it carefully and with respect. The way this played out was ... YouTube organization "won", Google Play team "lost."
I gave up, cancelled my sub, and bought Spotify.
I probably come off as an unhinged google hater to some, solely because of my extreme hate for google having killed Google Music. I loved that application so much, especially before it was reskinned with material.
That was an annoying and janky migration, but Youtube Music has a better interface than Google Play Music ever did.
Though conceptually it's still just weird. A video that I like on youtube because of the video component isn't necessarily a song I want to listen to as music. Also it really needs the ability to block music from certain artists.
As far as the android app goes I disagree. While there are minor improvements, there are major steps backwards in offline playing, library management and account management. An entirely frustrating experience trying to use the app.
I get that different products would be pretty siloed within their corporate structure, so I know that they weren't just going to use the YouTube code. However, why are products that are released well after plenty of other apps have forged a path so that the new app can research what works and doesn't work, what do people like/not like, and all of that type of basic information just so abysmally ignored so that this "new" thing is so inferior?
If you're not the first pioneering version of something, you better be doing everything the others are doing, but better. Otherwise, what's the point of your product?
I've been out of Google for over a decade, but my understanding is that their advancement metrics are still rather broken in incentivizing people to reinvent the wheel and call it new and innovative, rather than link some other team's code and contribute patches back.
There will never be block as much as - on Google search doesn't work the way it used to. Imagine you blocking someone paying a fortune to be relevant.
Sure if you don’t remember the vastly better user experience the app had pre-material (I call it googles Swing skin) design.
Pro tip: you can use separate brand account for YT Music without any additional fee.
Seconding this. YTMusic is absolute garbage. A disgrace to the services it "replaces."
I really miss Play Music, sadly I grew accustomed to the half baked YouTube Music crap, it's that or fall into the Spotify hell.
If you store music locally or on Google Drive then give https://musicsync.ashishb.net/ a try
Or Apple Music :)
I’ve also come to enjoy Apple Music. Has the same upload capabilities I liked with google music plus it matches them to lossless these days. Took apple like 5-6 years to make the ui not suck but it’s decent these days too. Also, no joe rogan podcast being recommended to me constantly when I just want music and there’s a nice separate classical music app too.
I don't think I've ever had a JRE podcast recommended to me on Spotify. They seem to have dialed down the podcasts in the front page (or at least they did so for people who care less about them, like me). I still get some and I agree that it's pretty annoying especially when I misclick on a podcast (especially jarring since podcasts have ads even with premium!)
Nothing is worse than constantly seeing jre show up on your cars CarPlay/android auto screen because of Spotify. I will never use them again because of that. Also their high bitrate lossless rollout was a lie.
From an earlier article, if you're wondering the same as me:
> Podcasts in YouTube Music will be available regardless of whether you have a YouTube Premium subscription.
What I'm getting from this is that I will be hearing many more ads, and be unable to listen to podcasts if my screen is off or if I switch to any other apps on my phone.
For the latter:
> The company notes that all users can listen to podcasts on-demand, offline, in the background, and while casting
Yeah, for now. I used to be able to split my screen and have YouTube running in the background while in other apps, until they took that away in an update.
As a free user on Android, I'm able to use YT in PiP mode with any non-music video. Also FWIW, I doubt YT Music will ever have enough monopolistic control over the podcast industry to take away such fundamental functionality.
Picture-in-Picture requires a YouTube Premium subscription outside the US.
Will they be available without a Youtube Music subscription though? Those are separate subscription plans
They already are
Is Google even serious about YouTube Music? The entire music experience, especially on TV with the YouTube app, is downright awful. On the Apple TV YouTube app, they don't even have proper music controls like repeat, shuffle and so on.
> In addition, Google will also support the option to download an OPML file of their show subscriptions from Google Podcasts, which they can upload to any app that supports importing if they don’t want to move to YouTube Music.
Not so much, but pretty close
> YouTube Music is not available in your area
Oh yeah, that app that currently has zero podcasts support of any kind. Excellent.
My YouTube Music app has a podcasts section with subscriptions, downloads, etc.
Sure, YouTube now has a "Podcasts" category, like they have "Gaming".
youtube.com/podcasts
They don't have RSS feeds or even audio file support. If you're a podcaster, you have to take your audio files and add a still image or audiogram to turn it into a video, then upload _that_.
Google is lucky they have so many monopolistic elements in their business model, otherwise customers would be leaving left, right and center due to non-stop shutdowns of serives they launch.
Using a Google app, and investing any time whatsoever is a waste as it will be gone 6 months to 2 years down the road.
Seems like brutal PR to me, but they can get away with it.
It sounds like the service launches and shutdowns are incentivized anyway based on what other commenters are saying, so that would explain it.
Follow the money!
<shameless>I made a JavaScript function that can export Google Podcasts to OPML since they don't have that feature. https://github.com/lucasrangit/google-podcasts-export-opml Please give it a try. Feedback welcome!</shameless>
> The move will leave only Apple among the major players that hasn’t consolidated music and podcasts into a single destination
Apple just finished UNbundling everything from one monolithic app, now people want it back?
I've never understood this bundling. I listen to a lot of podcasts and a lot of music. I always know what I want to listen to. I don't need or want podcasts cluttering up my music app when I'm trying to play or discover music. I don't need or want music cluttering up my podcasts when I am trying work through my infinitely long podcast queue. It's never the case that I'm looking for _either_ a podcast or music to fill the silence.
Different use cases. Different audio mediums. Different apps.
As they say, those who don't understand / learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Apple learned that having them separate was more beneficial, a lesson Google and Spotify have not.
It's astonishing the strategy that Google follows with their products. This trend of releasing stuff and cancelling it later is reaching the point of being meme. Don't get me wrong, I totally understand that markets are hard to predict and compete in and offering a competent product at those sizes requires a lot of economic and human effort but for god sake, I seriously think they should plan better and think twice because this is seriously damaging their image.
Nobody at Google ever got promoted for maintaining an existing product.
Creating something new and half-baked is what promo packets are made of!
TBH this doesn't matter that much, as there are plenty of other great podcast apps that one can use. This is one of the things I love most about the podcast ecosystem is that (at least for now), it's a very open platform with the exception of Spotify exclusives.
Good riddance, what a dumpster fire. The tiny buttons for pause, replay, skip buttons are all right next to each other on the lock screen, so you often skip podcasts when you really want to pause or fast forward. on the other hand, the rewind 10-seconds button has half the real estate of the widget. Downloads arent automatically deleted even after the episode is completed (even if you mark as played or remove from queue). There's no skip intro/outro options.
Frankly, the Overcast app is one of the main things attracting me to iOS at this point, and a dearth of good native podcast clients is hurting the Pixel/Google ecosystem
Have you tried Pocket Casts? https://pocketcasts.com/
It's now owned by Automattic (of Wordpress.com and tumblr) and the clients are open source
I switched from iOS/Overcast to Android/PocketCasts and I found it had a number of benefits which I struggle to recall now... batch downloads might be one of them.
My main bug bear is how how some screens are drawers and some screens are pages which makes navigation confusing. Even after years of use, I still keep accidentally closing the drawer screens when trying to scroll and trying to navigate backwards which isn't allowed. Please... just make them all pages so they behave consistently with the same navigation and gestures.
I use PocketCasts on iOS and agree about the sheets, I think the theory is that your "Now Playing" page is basically an overlay that can exist anywhere in the app, so you can go around looking at other podcasts while you listen but quickly pop back in to what's playing. Apple Music is set up the same way, I wonder if that was the inspiration for that layout.
I've used Pocket Casts for ~8 years. Can't recommend it enough, a really great app.
Second this. I tried Overcast and moved back. The availability of an Android app and web client that syncs your progress is amazing.
I'm pretty happy with _Podcast Republic_ on Android. Its a bit of a "power user" app, but I have yet to find something that I want to tweak that it doesn't let me tweak via its vast settings menus.
Google Listen (2009-2012)
Google Play Music (2011 - 2020)
Google Podcasts (2018 - 2024)
Forgot all about Google Listen!
Off-topic: Would be great to have a way again to simply share links to podcast-episodes which work regardless of the used app.
Before the podcast-hype one could simply share the direct-link to the audio-file.
Now all you get are links which require Google/Apple/Spotify to open.
(But realistically, I don't know who would be willing to drive this. It would need backing from at least Google/Apple/Spotify to maintain a central catalogue, and the incentive seems to be low...)
> Would be great to have a way again to simply share links to podcast-episodes which work regardless of the used app.
There's nothing stopping this from happening today except for app developers not putting any UI for it in their apps. HTTP has a Link header (which servers should already be sending, whether apps actually do anything with it or not), RSS has a field to link to pages, HTML has `link` elements (and the `rel` attribute for `a` elements) to link back to the file, and audio file containers of course let people include metadata.
So linking to a podcast episode is as simple in principle as giving someone a URL directly to the file or the associated episode page. (It's a URL. That's it. Done.) It's getting application authors and server operators to do their part, though, which is another matter.
I would assume that's not too hard given most podcasts use RSS or similar for distribution.
Whether each individual episode is a separately entity (like, with a distinct URI or whatever) within that format, I don't know.
It's not that trivial to do as an end-user. If I listen to a podcast on Spotify which I'd like to share with you (who doesn't use Spotify), I would have to Google that podcast and try to find a RSS-Link for it, which becomes more and more difficult as most pages now link directly to Spotify or Apple and provide no RSS-url.
Ideal would be an URI like podcast:// which apps could simply register for on OS-level, but I frankly don't know which entity would actually want to drive such a standardization.
> Ideal would be an URI like podcast://
No, that would be far from ideal, for the same reason that the feed[1] URI scheme was flawed (cooked up by very confused people) from the beginning. And among other things, a podcast:// URI would now mean I can't open the thing in my browser unless my browser vendor adds support and I download the new version.
The file is served over HTTP(S). Just use the http or https URI. Podcast players need to do their part[2] in dealing with them.
This is infuriating, I had just migrated from Stitcher to google Podcasts
Is nothing sacred at Google? Podcasts is a great simple app that does one thing well. I suppose that means Google had to kill it.
I'm likewise surprised that Scholar, Alerts and Translate still exist. The expectation really is that if it's great at what it does, but isn't flagship, then it must be killed.
Does this mean that people who are paying for subscriptions to Youtube Music so they can listen to music will now be flooded with recommendations and ads for podcasts, just like on Spotify?
Original title: “Google Podcasts to shut down in 2024 with listeners migrated to YouTube Music“
There were Google Podcasts?
Yes, I'm using it. I first started using Spotify for podcasts but those idiots (sorry Spotify) don't let you disable the auto play so it automatically starts a new podcast after you finish one. At least on the free tier. I then switched to Google. The reason I care is that I often listen to podcasts when I'm in bed at night as it helps me sleep.
For me, Spotify on Mobile has a sleep timer functionality and one of the options of "End of episode". I do have premium so cannot confirm if it exists on the free tier.
The autoplay is extra annoying when listening to an older episode too. When you go to the full list it automatically jumps to the one last played. Scrolling long lists in Spotify is very buggy.
The only way to fix it is mark the newly-started episode as played, then mark as unplayed. So many extra steps that shouldn’t even be necessary in the first place.
Against better judgement, I was using that.
Great...
Remember kids, never build anything onto Google.
Add it to the list: https://killedbygoogle.com/
Oh no, not that service I never used because I learned my lesson trusting Google with basic media organizational applications!
Seriously, it's sad that they broke their reputation on this, but the writing was on the wall from day zero. If you're an Android user, I recommend BeyondPod (http://www.beyondpod.mobi/android/index.htm): it's simple, it's reliable, it integrates to a search engine, and it also supports pasting in links with authentication so you can get any Patreon exclusive feeds you have access to (something that, to my knowledge, Google Podcasts was never able to support).
I hate that google shuts down their services so much. I was using Google Podcast a lot and then I switched to Pocket Casts a year ago. Luckily I have no dependency on it. I have so much notes on Google Keep that I am genuinely worried if they shut it down. They might give prior notice and I can easily export. I think except Search, Maps, Mail, YouTube anything else could be taken down any time. Same happening with their Domains. I was also using hangouts a lot. It just makes my so anxious to use any of their product. I have to use any google product keeping in mind that it could get shut down any day.
Why did Google fail to turn "simple" apps like Google Podcasts and Google Reader into low maintenance apps?
Google Podcasts is so simple it could even have been an open source reference app showcasing Flutter and some backend GCP services.
Internal promo economy.
Same reason Reader got killed.
Nobody wants to work on that.
That's an odd thing to do. My parents use it because it has "Podcast" in its name so it's their go-to solution for listening to podcasts. I really doubt that they will click and go to a "YouTube Music" site or app in order to consume a simple podcast.
Google Podcasts is simple to use, one thing made with a clear, specific purpose, with an easy to use interface. They should keep it just to improve their brand recognition. But no... YouTube Music it is.
Remember Google Videos ???.
Could for the life not understand back then why Youtube and this existed at the same time.
It make sense - move all consumer content under the Youtube brand - hopefully the teams working on these products don't have the same "I got to start a new team to launch another shitty duplicated product in order for top management to notice and promote us.
The folks working on Youtube are doing great work even if most Googlers higher up might think it is so mundane and boring - it pays the bills.
Google Video was YouTube’s competitor. Only after some years Google acquired YT
After the demise of Google Play Music, I wrote https://musicsync.ashishb.net
When the rumors of Google Podcasts being killed started circulating, I added podcast support to my app. In many cases matching or doing better than the Google Podcasts in terms of useful features.
Podcasts doesn't seem like something I would want to manage myself. An album I grab once and keep forever.
A podcast I grab everyday and keep until I've listened.
Your link seems to mostly talk about uploading and managing it myself. I'm guessing podcasts don't actually work like this?
You just have to add RSS feed URL or you can even search and subscribe to podcasts inside the app. And the new episodes will be fetched regularly to your phone. The media file won't be downloaded unless you enable that.
Sorry the unclear description. I'll fix it.
I actually like the google podcasts app. It's simple, it works, no ads, does everything I need it to do. Sigh. RIP.
(to migrate users to YouTube Music)
YT Music seems to be where Google Media apps shift their users to when they retire.
--
Must be fun to be on that dev-team:
"We have a new high-priority ticket: Add podcast-support to inherit users from podcast app. Ok, so I guess we move the 'Compete with Spotify/AppleMusic' stories back to the funnel"
I'm not necessarily super surprised, the uptake on Google Podcasts always seemed very low.
One way to avoid the mess that is Google Music app is to subscribe to your podcast on your RSS feed which provides much better organization than whatever is happening in Google Music. Its truly astonishing how bad this app is.
Podcast Addict is a great Android app for playing and keeping track of podcasts.
On a related note, we have a Google dot, and asking it to play a podcast, it ALWAYS resumes from the last episode I listened to in that podcast, often weeks old. I can’t get it to simply play the latest episode of random podcast
Dot is Amazon. Do you have a Google or Amazon device?
Google Nest Hub, and a Google puck Nest Mini? I never know what to call them, I know they deprecated Nest name and pushed everyone to Google Home app so never know what it’s called today.
But Google device, playing Google podcast and it ALWAYS RESUMES even when I try all sorts of verbal command iterations (play latest, play todays episode, etc)
Would be good if Google made the URLs redirect for RSS feeds and libraries to seamlessly pickup.
I would suggest that anybody creating their own media hosts this in a variety of locations, and not rely on a single point of failure.
For a good list of podcasting apps by platform and feature: https://podcastindex.org/apps
This is why I scoff at folks who want rcs to be adopted everywhere. How can google be trusted to maintain anything past what seem like pretty consistent expiration dates?
Please raise your hands, who is surprised?
FFS.
How do I subscribe to Podcasts on an Android phone now?
I highly recommend AntennaPod[1]. If you need/want sync, it can be achieved though gpodder[2].
Podcast Addict, been using it long before Google decided to try a podcast app.
A good option for power users, probably a bit overwhelming if you just want something simple, but for someone like me that wants to do stuff like different default playback speeds for different podcasts, it's really good.
Been using Antenna[0] for years now, highly recommend!
I use PocketCast. Can't say I've investigated privacy or other concerns but it is free and seems quite functional with a good UI.
I use Pocket Casts [1]. Can't say I've investigated privacy or other concerns but it is free and seems quite functional with a good UI.
I wish there was an open source backend service for syncing. Since the clients are open source, should be technically possible to replicate the functionality of the cloud service. But maybe that's harder than just creating from scratch? Too bad though because pocket casts is definitely one of the best android clients around.
Pocket Casts has been reliable for me for a few years.
PodcastAddict works fine
TFA explains the situation pretty well.
Google Podcasts is still around until next year, and the Youtube Music app will have that functionality added this year. It's all in the first paragraph.
Yeah, I'll believe it when I see it.
They said the same thing with Google Play Music, and never added the same functionality to YT music, which is massively inferior for everything besides discovering new music
YouTube.com/podcasts doesn't even fucking work outside the USA.
Yeah, because them adding podcast functionality is going to happen in the future. They haven't done it yet, that's what that means.
If you believe that I have some magic beans to sell you.
PocketCasts is open source and is decent. It was bought by Automattic (who also own and develop WordPress), so should be a reasonably safe bet going forward.
There's hundreds of alternatives... I've used Pocket Casts and Podcast Addict and both work fine.
The functionality is being migrated into youtube music
Youtube music has no functionality.
YT music is good for discovering new music, but otherwise pretty shit compared to Google Play Music (and I doubt it will be any better for Podcasts)
Which podcast app works best on Android Auto?
Does this mean that to listen to a free podcast you need to have a youtube music subscription?
TIL Google had a podcasts app
the killedbygoogle list just grew a little bit longer
They had one of the OG podcast apps, Google Listen from 2009, year after first Android phone release. Probably part of someones 5%. Which was surprisingly functional, and of course they killed it 3 years later.
Typical fate for a Google product that consumes RSS feeds.
I guess youtube music is youtube sound now?
How is it that we live in 2023 and apple’s native podcast app is pretty mediocre and now Google is killing one that was slightly better.
I definitely never saw this coming.
Google Podcasts seemed to source its feeds from more sources, maybe even the open internet, since podcasts are just RSS feeds, more or less. This led to a wider selection, like pirate streams with all the episodes of paywalled podcasts.
There it is.
Podcasting, like wikipedia, Linux, WWW and a few other relatively "free" objects are such an important counterexamples. There's so much to learn from all of them, like theoretical devices come to life.
The inability of big services (EG, google, apple) to monopolize or gatekeep podcasting relates directly to their failure to make money.(1) the protocol's minimal snooping options relates to the failure to implement digital adtech... and to the lack of good discovery/recommendation services. The unique freedom capabilities podcasting seems to have. The barriers(2) to entry... all so interlocked.
Spotify's big money attempt to make money off podcasting is/was all about buying exclusivity. Paying big podcasters (eg rogan) to remove their podcast from other players... podcasts spotify already had free access to. Not shocking or surprising, but instructive. They very big money... more than anyone would likely invest on podcasting proper.
The market panic when netflix realised it was in a competitive market with price pressure from both consumers and producers because competition. How are you supposed to have 50% profit margins like that! Google would rather walk away from a market than concede anything short of full price setter mode on either end.
There's this point where Peter Thiel and Karl Marx are finishing each other's sentences and drinking Rum. I'm starting to think that point is a certain type of prevailing market condition. The rest is derivative.
"Google says it plans on further increasing its investment in the podcast experience on YouTube Music and making it more of a destination for podcast fans with features focused on discovery, community, and switching between audio podcasts and video. The latter is something rival Spotify has also"
Anyone remember the "HD video race?" Online video was obviously a big thing. Bandwidth & quality were big problems receding as fast as broadband expanded. Google had an in-house video hosting service. They bought youtube. Other services still existed. Google effin plowed forward. They smoked everyone with their ability to implement HD streaming at massive scale. No one could keep up.
Now Google's PR statements refer to breakthrough features like "backgrounding video" as a multi-year effort to reach feature parity with spotify. oy.
Google can successfully do many things. The are capable of making excellent products. I think they're also capable of making many more economically viable products. However... the enormous profit margins they enjoy make anything short of monopoly pointless.
(1)Google literally sell ads on those same podcasts via youtube. (2) At some point, "barrier to entry" goes negative. Early blogging tech lowered barriers to entry. Referring to modern social media's "barriers" feels like discussing the "challenge" of eating caramel popcorn dusted with coke.
It will relaunch as part of Google+ in 2025, along with a competing add-in to gmail that you have to pay to remove.
I know sarcasm isn’t very hn but this is hard to distinguish from a genuine prediction.
Another one bites the dust
Ffs... I am a really good predictor for what Google is killing next. I just started using it because it was preinstalled on the pixel and I was lazy.
It’s getting rolled into YouTube Music, not killed off.
The UI might not be as good. I guess we’ll see.
It's getting killed off. Some features from Google Podcasts may make their way into YT Music, but I doubt all of them will (the Google Play Music 'migration' told me everything I need to know)
As far as users are concerned, it is killed off.
Especially considering how migration from Google Music to YT Music went.
Personally despite looking to get into podcasts I ended up writing off Google Podcasts from the start, expecting it will stop working just like Listen did.
Same here. Lazyness bit me. Back to antennapod I guess.
Same. Simple app that I use to listen to a sleep podcast because I can't listen to the Patreon feed on Spotify.
They _still_ don't support adding a custom feed?
That miss was what pushed me to google podcast in the first place, along with their absolute refusal to fix broken feeds for existing podcasts in their index.