Google Podcasts App Will Shut Down in 2024 as YouTube Music is Taking Over
- Laurent Giret
- Sep 26, 2023
-
7
Google announced today that it will shut down its Google Podcasts app in 2024. The app originally launched back in 2018, but it received little updates in recent years as Google has revamped its podcasts strategy and made YouTube the new destination for podcasts.
While there are already a lot of podcasts on YouTube, Google launched a new podcast experience in the YouTube Music app in the US earlier this year. YouTube Music is better suited for podcast listening as the app lets users download podcasts for offline listening (no Premium subscription required), and it also lets users switch between the audio and video versions of a podcast (if available) on the fly.
Windows Intelligence In Your Inbox
Sign up for our new free newsletter to get three time-saving tips each Friday — and get free copies of Paul Thurrott's Windows 11 and Windows 10 Field Guides (normally $9.99) as a special welcome gift!
"*" indicates required fields
“We plan to make Podcasts on YouTube Music globally available before the end of the year,” Google said today. “Looking forward to 2024, we’ll be increasing our investment in the podcast experience on YouTube Music — making it a better overall destination for fans and podcasters alike with YouTube-only capabilities across community, discovery and audio/visual switching. Later in 2024, as part of this process, we’ll be discontinuing Google Podcasts.”
Google plans to make the migration process from Google Podcasts to YouTube Music as easy as possible. Google promised a “seamless migration tool” as well as the ability to add any podcast to YouTube Music using its RSS feed, which is something that Google Podcasts already supports. Google Podcasts users will also get the option to export all of their podcast subscriptions as an OPML file so that they can easily import them into another app.
“We know this transition will take time, but these efforts will allow us to build an amazing product and a single destination that rewards creators and artists and provides fans with the best Podcasts experience,” Google said today. Spotify and Amazon Music are two apps that already provide access to millions of songs as well as podcasts, and it’s not really surprising to see Google now doing the same with YouTube Music.