Google Provides More Details for Podcasts Transition to YouTube Music
- Paul Thurrott
- Dec 07, 2023
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Google today provided a bit of clarity on its closure of Google Podcasts in 2024 and the transition to YouTube Music.
“You will be able to use Google Podcasts through March 2024,” the Google Support site explains. “Google Podcasts users can easily migrate their subscriptions to YouTube Music or a supported podcast app.”
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Previously, Google had only said that it would discontinue Google Podcasts “in 2024,” so that mention of the end of March is a new and more precise date. News that users can migrate subscriptions to YouTube Music (and other podcast apps) is also new: As the support site notes, there are new export options in Google Podcasts for YouTube Music and “another app.”
That latter option exports to a format called OPML, so the receiving app must support that for it to work. (Pocket Casts, for example, is compatible.) And while Google Podcasts will stop working by April 1, 2024, users (in the U.S. at least) have until July 2024 to perform the export.
I’ve already made my case for not combining podcasts and music into a single app, but my big regret here is that Google Podcasts is/was fantastic, with a minimalist user interface and fun integration with Google Search and other services. But I couldn’t use it because it wasn’t compatible with Sonos.
Ah well.