Google Podcasts shutting down in 2024 for YouTube Music

Oh boy, can't wait for Youtube Mail and Youtube Maps next

it'll all end with YouTube Search
I wish this were more implausible, but at this point I'm getting worried.
Let's just rename Google to Youtube and get it over with
Youtube is basically their entertainment brand. So that really doesn't make sense.
- People are just resistant to change because the GPM to YTM transition sucked when they released a half baked app

Classic google. Add this to the Google app graveyard.

link to graveyard
- Oh man, Google surveys is dead? That stuff was useful for so many things, I'm legitimately saddened by its loss.
- That site has a bit of inflation to it.
  Like, some of those things are just standalone apps that got merged into other products. Like Fitbit coach is now just part of the Fitbit app.

Man, I really did like Google Podcasts.

It was way better than the other podcast apps. And coming from iTunes, it was a smooth transition.

This sucks. Open source your shit, Google, and I promise we'll keep it going.

- RIP Play Music, YT music is ass.
AntennaPod is your FOSS podcast friend
Would be nice if more companies just open sourced the stuff they don't need or don't want to maintain anymore.
Even if no one picks it up, at least it got another chance.
What value would oss bring here when it's the content that matters most? I'm actually really interested to know because I too really liked this app/service.
- Podcasts are (generally, Spotify excluded) on an open standard. They're just RSS feeds. So, the content can be aggregated by anyone. So it's primarily the UI that will be different between different podcast players.
Podcasts didn't work with SD cards, yt music does, can't say I'll miss it.

google

one app

does one thing

google

why is this so hard to understand

It's likely not financially viable to have separate teams for their many products that all have similar features. Consolidating makes more sense because they can actually afford to maintain development.
Honestly, they should just roll YouTube Music into the default YouTube app, as well. And they probably will at some point. It just doesn't make sense to have these services - which are basically all the same, functionally-speaking - spread out across multiple apps.
- Honestly, they should just roll YouTube Music into the default YouTube app, as well.
  I don't think I could disagree more. I use both and listening to music and watching videos are entirely different activities for me and I want the apps to do different things in different ways.
- The UI and use case for a video platform and a music app are very, very different
- It's likely not financially viable to have separate teams for their many products that all have similar features.
  Clearly Google doesn't follow that logic because they have numerous competing chat apps. Even Google Maps has chat...

About two weeks ago I thought about this in regards to google podcasts.
"Well this one will probably stick around long enough that I'll have moved on by the time google shuts it down. They don't even host the episodes anyway. They source the metadata and audio files from elsewhere. All they really host is my listening history, queue, and subscriptions. Certainly this is less likely to get the axe anytime soon."
two weeks later*
It really does suck though. I genuinely like the google podcasts app/website. Best one I've found so far that works how I like my apps/services to work.
- Man I recently switched from podcast addict after years because podcast addict put an annoying nag about permissions changes in Android, plus I always had issues with the playlist/queuing. Guess I'll go back to it soon

Never surprising to hear of yet another Google service shutting down.

They pushed so hard for youtube music, which is nowhere near as good as play music was (had a subscription there...amazing little app, if you even remember that), that I forgot completely about Google podcasts. Spotify really marketed its podcast feature too well so I used that instead.

- Honestly I think YouTube music is finally at parity with Google music. I'd prefer some of the fluff to go away (e.g. the comments, samples, & podcasts) but overall it's gotten much better.
- You must not know many Android users then. Almost all the android users I know (like 90% of them) use spotify. And I think all the apple users I know use it.
- I can't argue with that, it was just useful to migrate my data across multiple devices. I badly miss the ui if play music, and I mean it.
- Yeh it's dogshit but so is apple music.

I miss google play music. Never really liked youtube music

YouTube music is great, give it a go
- i bet they discontinue youtube-music in 2026 by selling it to sony
Does anyone know why they shut it down? The replacement was worse on every single account. And by such a significant amount too.
- 2 reasons, but the main one is that they had to get separate individual licenses for songs or something and that was likely minimally cutting into their absolutely insane profits, but with YouTube music it's still just YouTube so only one is needed.. idk that's what I read on Reddit a couple years ago. The other is that their workplace culture is completely fucked and they push new apps instead of updating the old ones.
  I'm not saying they should be like apple but sometimes seeing the killed by google list grow is frustrating when you look back and were an active user of a bunch of the things

It's so wild that Google would rather weaken their own brand than just keep a secondary frontend around. It would require minimal maintenance cost (given the size of their company, just have 1-2 fulltime devs working on keeping it in shape and updated), and it could access the exact same backend as the Youtube Music app.

Weird.

And don't misunderstand me, I really don't like Google Podcasts for podcasts, but I also admit that having a separate app for podcasts is superior, as you listen to them very differently than you listen to music. Spotify amiably shows how their recommendation algorithms absolutely cannot handle someone listening to both, anyways.

They probably want to monetize on podcasts too, in the same way they do on videos and music. At the moment, Google Podcast is completely free and ad-free.
I actually don't think it's a bad decision. I think merging it with YouTube is a good thing. They could integrate tightly with YouTube since they already added a "podcast" feature and you could seemlessly switch between Video and Audio.
Sooner or later I expected that to happen.
- But to a user, what would the benefit be? Would the UI also change depending on content played to expose the controls specialized for each type of media?

google discontinued something? shocking

That's just the Google way... still didn't get over the RSS reader disaster... Anyways, I tried the app a couple of times: it's not a great app for listening to podcasts. If you like podcasts, try Antennapod, Pocket Casts or Podcast Addict (and please stay away from Spotify).

In the end: good riddance.

AntennaPod is the best.
- Hell yeah, AntennaPod is so good. It's better better than most paid and ad supported alternatives I've tried and the best part it's FOSS.
  https://www.f-droid.org/packages/de.danoeh.antennapod/
- Antennapod + Gpoddersync FTW
- One use for RSS feeds is to distribute podcasts to multiple apps. I believe most podcasts apps are just RSS readers combined with an audio player.
- Using IFTTT to send starred RSS items to pocket is really useful even still!
- I use RSS to help decide if an item is worth reading or not based on the title
Why did you say "stay away from Spotify"?
- Because Spotify uses (not their own) podcasts to generate revenue, but doesn't pay the creators.

Sure, a video app makes much more sense for podcast delivery!

Honestly, podcasts on YouTube are better if you have sponsorblock
They are mimicking Spotify. How they have music and podcasts built into one app.

Spent a solid hour trying apps to switch to. Found podcast republic which does everything I want with tons of customisation and a one time payment to ditch the ads. Love it.

I've been using PocketCasts for years but I've been thinking about jumping ship. I'm going to give republic a shot. Thanks
- I'm grandfathered in with lifetime premium on PocketCasts which makes it difficult to consider jumping ship.
Been using Podcast Republic forever now. (~7 years)
The developer did so much during the time. It allows you to do so much.
Might try it, does it have skip silence, per cast playback speeds and configurable start and ending skips?
- Yep, I don't use all of those features so I had a quick look and yes it has all of those.

Such a bad idea. Podcasts seek forward and interface actually worked. Zero chance the migration to YouTube is smooth.

- I use YTM exclusively for music streaming. The interface has been getting worse over time, but the podcasts integration is pure dogshit and they should be embarrassed. Basically it's a subscription to a youtube channel in the back-end and they might add RSS support some day in the far future. Their only focus now is on allowing creators to add an RSS feed for ingestion, not for users to do the same.
  This is a moronic idea, and Google is ruining one of their only good app experiences.

Before you get used to YTM and they drop that too, just use AntennaPod

Before you get used to YTM and they drop that too,
Sure they will integrate YTM into YT, using just a tab to switch.
- They already do this on my google TV. The YTM app just opens YT with a music tab. Won’t be long before the mobile apps follow.

Alternative recommendations?

Pocket Casts
I've been quite happy with antennapod. Discovery is kind of a pain in the ass, but it's open source, and management and playback have been solid.
- I second all of this. I started using AntennaPod a couple months ago and like it. It handles "chapters" in podcasts better, too. Searching is fiddly though.
- PocketCast is also OpenSource. Today I switched over and it's also pretty good.
  I honestly can't really decide which one I find better. Try them out for yourself.
AntennaPod on Android and Overcast on iOS have been my go-to options.
For Android: It depends on your needs. For better user experience I'd say PocketCasts. For best customization Podcast Republic, Podcast Addict. AntennaPod was for a while the only open source project, PocketCasts is now open source too. If that matters to you, go with those. I like AntennaPod, specifically the sleep timer. However it has some downsides: discovery / search sucks and it's hard to access the queue quickly if your phone uses gesture navigation.
For iOS: pocket casts, overcast
- hard to access the queue quickly if your phone uses gesture navigation
  Recently learned you can disable just the left back gesture. Amazing quality-of-life improvement.
Antenna pod.
Podcast Addict
- @ocassionallyaduck @binarybomb Migration is migraine
- Excellent app
Try Antennapod
@binarybomb @fne8w2ah A long time ago I used Pocketcasts which is very good but not open source.
FOSS options are AntennaPod or Podverse depending on your needs.
AntennaPod is very popular but Podverse is newer and rapidly developing and it includes a great web player. I'm using Podverse currently, which works with or without an account.
You could also use any RSS reader, and just use Podverse to search and find podcast feeds to subscribe to.
I like Podbean.

Goad I never jumped onboard.

Podcast Addict for the win

In my case Pocket Casts, but yes.

Another killedbygoogle

Awww for fuck's sake. Why do they always cancel the good apps???

Google podcast is an awful app (also it was pretty expected that they will kill Google podcasts and replace it with YouTube music since that was hinted in the last few years)
- That's your opinion. I really like that app.

Man they really want me to switch to Spotify

Use Antennapod instead
Spotify sucks, but it doesn't suck as bad as YouTube music does. I lost a few tracks in the conversion but it works so much better that it was worth it.
- I ended up hitting YTM, then Spotify, then settled on Tidal after Google Play Music shut down. Nothing beats what GPM had

This sucks. I use it a lot. I picked it over other apps for a reason. Don't make me change my habits!

Laaaaaaaaaaaaaame.

I been using itfor for years realy loved the layout.

Same. And now the history of what I've listened to will be gone 😕
- You can grab it via https://takeout.google.com/
  Why do they keep doing this? Google reader was so damn good.
- I think they can migrate the user history as well. But it's not convenient

How hard is it to keep one brand associated with the one thing they do well? I'd understand it if you only have one brand your trying to expand, like Spotify starting to add video content. But when Google own a wide range of apps each with their own brand and identity, they really don't need to get everyone in one place like YouTube.

YouTube for me will always be about short video. When they stopped letting my buy movies on Google play, I didn't start using YouTube and just use Amazon now. When they stopped music, I didn't start to use YouTube music and stuck with Spotify. And now they are stopping Podcasts, I won't move to YouTube. I'm not that bothered but I don't see why they keep doing it, they must hemorrhage users every time and surely the value of YouTube with all these extra features etc is still less than the potential sum of the original parts.

I have never used it. Always used Podcast Addict for podcasts. Spotify made it all clunky

Just use AntennaPod. You don't need Google spyware to listen to podcasts.

2 of the original big 4 for us podcast folks down! Stitcher what? A month ago?

Stitcher died?? I hadn't even heard that news.
- Yeah like 1-2mo ago. Very recent

@fne8w2ah IMO there is little reason to use a big platform for listening to podcasts. I would recommend https://podverse.fm/ or just any old RSS reader which doesn't need any account nor is in any danger of being shut down ever.

Hopefully it will be better for when it comes to Android Auto, as GPM is my go to in the car.

At least from everything I've read they've thought about migration and will actually let you use RSS, I was worried they weren't going to add that functionality to youtube music

Finally. That's exactly what I expected. The app hasn't been updated for years, they removed the Google podcast widget on the Google search and added a "Podcast" category to YouTube.

Such a shame