As of Tuesday, April 2, Google began to gradually shut down its podcast application. This happened in the US market, where the application is not available, other world markets will soon follow. In Esk, the application is still available (tested on April 3), but I will be able to turn it off very soon. Google has now decided to combine the service Podcasts with its own music application, YouTube Music. So if you want to use one for the spoken word provided by Google, you have to go here.
If you have purchased a subscription to Podcasts, it should migrate to YouTube Music for free. Google should give users enough time to migrate, even after shutting down the Podcasts service in the given region. It’s a bag to remind you anyway, if you have paid for any content. The application should prompt you to do so yourself, and it will migrate t as.
In addition to YouTube Music, you can of course also find your favorite spoken content in other services that are not linked to Google. Specifically, there is an alternative in the form of Spotify on Android, and Apple Podcasts is pre-installed on Apple (Google Podcasts is currently also available on iOS). First, on Spotify and Apple Podcasts, you can find spoken content from the iDNES podcast offer in the evening, the same as on the website.
The Google Podcasts service was launched in 2018, so it is one of the younger services in the company’s offer. Over 500 million users have installed it on Android during this time. Google Podcasts is especially dedicated to the integration of the voice assistant and thus personalized content recommendations.
As the reason for connecting the podcast application with YouTube Music, Google representatives stated it last year on the company’s blog, that people go to the YouTube platform on their own. In a survey of American users, 23% of them answered that they go for podcasts on YouTube, compared to only 4% who went for the Google Podcasts service. The combination of services owned by the same company therefore makes sense from this point of view.
