WHOA. Now true full integration for all my listening. Podcasts on the way to work, Google's Playlist while at work, my personal music during workouts after work, "Feeling Lucky" while at home. This, will be awesome (so long, Pocketcast).
Keep in mind that this actively requires the participation of the podcaster to upload their shows, unlike traditional podcast apps like Pocket Casts which is based on RSS feeds. That is, it is a service more like iTunes which will have its own ecosystem and will be subject to Google's control.
It will be interesting to see if they can garner the support of viewers and content creators alike. For me, this is one of the few times that my support is not in Google's direction; I just love Pocket Casts too much.
The service asks for an RSS feed when you sign up.
I think Alex means that the creator has to add the RSS feed to Google Music. Unlike Pocketcast which finds podcast RSS feeds without the creator having to add them to the app.
Technically Pocket Casts mirrors/utilizes the iTunes directory API, to which you submitted your show at some point; this is no different. My hope is that Google can break the stronghold that Apple has on podcasts... iTunes is a broken piece of software (last time I checked it, ~1 year ago).
Yeah, it will need RSS feed for me to leave Pocketcast. Because Pocketcast is freaking amazing! And if it requires people to upload to their own domain + google I think we will see a lot less Podcast appearing on Google Play, and then I'm staying with Pocketcast!
But I would like Google to support RSS feeds as well. Would be nice to just have one app for listening to both Podcasts and Music.
Don't forget the biggest news that T-Mobile does not charge for Google Play streaming so this will get a lot of use on my commute! Love it, Google.
Is the Play Music app going to be a better podcast manager than Pocket Casts? I'm not so sure.
Love Pocket Casts, it's an app done well and when products are done well they will always survive :)
Some of you here are incorrectly comparing what Google is announcing here with what Pocket Casts is and does. Google's announcement is basically curation of podcasts built into Google Play Music. Pocket Casts does not do this. Pocket Casts is an RSS/XML client. Google is announcing a curation of podcasts that we all hope rivals what iTunes does with podcasts. Personally, I think Google just needs to acquire the Shifty Jelly team, bring in all of that tremendous talent, and let them work their magic on the Google Play Music app.
The biggest thing is that from here on out there will be analytics for Android users, and this isn't the case for pocket casts. It's a great app but there is no way for content creators to see the Android usage numbers, no rating to help promote good podcasts and what not. This is going to be a great move I look forward to this change.
Agreed. WTF Google?! Podcasts are free, it's not like there is any commercial issue getting in the way. Just open it up to all! If we can't get international podcasts then this is a non-starter for me.
Totally agree. What excuses does Google have this time?
What is so hard about opening it up to EVERYONE INTERNATIONALLY!
I agree.. This time Google has no excuse.
I don't get it...It is our fault for living in the rural backwaters of the world...
Come on Google, start being the global business you say you are.I just started using a VPN for my phone and you could use one to spoof your connection as coming from the US by picking a server in the US, although it might only work when on WiFi connections.
I imagine it's due to differing laws, and different support models, etc. Or we can pretend it's malicious. :)
I'd put my money on regionally managed load balancing server's for the launch. When you don't know how much demand you'll have and how the software will behave under real world demand, it's better to start with your A team at a smaller scale.
John Kerbaugh - that is the most intelligent speculative answer here. Refreshing to hear after all the assumptions that Google is just maliciously choosing to leave out the rest of the world. I really get sick of that, so thank you sir.
Awesome. I've been searching for a good cross-platform podcast player since quite some time and I didn't wanna pay 3 times (cough * PocketCasts * cough) for it. Glad that GPM will fill that void.
Craziness, $3.99 for the Android App, $4.99 for the iPhone app, and $9 for the web app. $17.98 in total for me to have complete access. I guess its not too much, but damn... I feel like I'd be happier with a $2 a month or something, and they would make more money in the long run also. But thats just me, I like everything in subscription models.
That is awesome! It will need to have automatically updated custom playlists, of course, with the un-played episodes added as they are published and played episodes removed. If this is just a place to go play one-off episodes or a Google-curated playlist, it won't work for most podcast listeners.
What about the rest of the world, Google? We still don't get contextual playlists and youtube red, but you won't even give us podcasts? Why should we continue to pay for Play Music when you keep ignoring us?
Pretty frustrating that I can't add my podcast, http://FrankReactions.com/show, because I live in Canada, even though half my listeners are in the US!
"Podcasts are coming soon to Google Play Music, but unfortunately they're not yet available in your country. Check back for updates" Is this a joke? 10 years late on podcasts and when you do add them its US only?
Lol you want a decent podcatcher stick to pocketcast, google almost NEVER does anything right the first time around, even with a proven formula that works they will still F it up some how. trust me, some feature that is really really important will get left out. straight away you fond the biggest flaw, US only. how many podcast you know that have regional restriction? its gonna probably come with some bullshit like no auto fetching or not automatically generating playlists for your podcast. trust me they are going to do it completely wrong and wont fix it for like 2 years after release Because everyone will be like Wow! google does podcasts now. Do you know how long it took for playbooks to have an offline dictionary? not to mention the features it still lacks
Better late than never. I developed my own solution to get my favourite podcasts in to Google Play Music but that might finally be able to be switched off when all the podcasts I listen to are allowed to register. I suspect that might take a while as I have them from all over the world. Russia, UK, US, Germany.
Hopefully Google enables a speed adjustment for playback. I listen to almost all my podcasts at X1.3
Google please don't blow this up! Give us a good way to play podcast like ability to skip 5,10, and 30 seconds and can you please answer why haven't you introduced sound leveling and crossfade on Google play music? And another thing.... Don't limit my related artists to just 16 I want to discover ALL of the related artists similar to the music I like!
The main problem that remains to be solved is the disappearance of podcasts from their respective servers, which means that after a factory reset, no podcatching app will be able to load the podcast file EVEN IF IT'S STORED LOCALLY. This problem only exists for those of us who save podcasts for relistening (or listening later, after the original has been removed from its server). If Google Play Music can fix this by retaining the the file on its servers, I, for one, would be delighted.
The only workaround has been to root the handset, run Titanium, which preserves the podcatching app's data settings so it can "find" the older files even if they're not on their respective servers any more.
While the two podcatchers I use have very elegant interfaces, they cannot avoid this shortcoming. I'm certainly not as fond of the Google Music i/o on my Android devices, but the exchange of persistence of files for i/o would be worth my while.
I am really grateful to the android, as many of my artificial intelligence tools work on this device. I would like to get the updates about the various activities, how can I know?
