Following the February announcement and March testing, podcasts are now officially rolling out to YouTube Music users in the US.
Podcasts in YouTube Music will be available on-demand, offline, and in the background for all listeners, regardless of whether you have a YouTube Premium subscription. It includes “casting and seamlessly switch[ing] between audio-video versions on YouTube Music.” In fact, Google explicitly notes how paying customers “may experience host-read endorsements or sponsorship messages when listening to podcasts.”
It’s currently rolling out to “all our listeners in the United States gradually.” Google says this “new podcast listening experience complements the podcast video experience on YouTube.” Only podcasts/shows that have uploaded video versions of episodes to YouTube are currently available. Meanwhile:
For those of you outside the United States, rest assured that we plan to bring podcasts in YouTube Music to other regions in the future.
In the YouTube Music Home tab, you’ll see a new Podcasts chip next to the other mood filters that loads a dedicated feed. Personalized carousels include Keep listening, Recommend episodes, and Your shows. The rest of this page is for podcast discovery with sections like Political Commentary, History, True Crime, Gaming, etc.
Meanwhile, Explore is home to a Popular episodes carousel, while “Podcasts” joins New releases, Charts, and Moods & genres.
In Library, Podcasts joins the high-level filter for Playlists, Songs, Albums, and Artists. Here you’ll find two Auto playlists for “New Episodes” from shows you’ve subscribed to and “Episodes for Later,” as well as any podcasts you’ve added to your library. There are also sub-filters for “Channels” you’ve subscribed to and “Downloads,” which has a “Downloaded Episodes” auto-playlist.
Show pages are similar in nature to albums and playlists with show art and an episode list that includes two lines of description, as well as publish date and playback status (duration, remaining time with a red bar, or “Played”). You can tap to see the full description with the ability to “Save episode for later” using the bookmark button and download for offline playback.
The Now Playing screen replaces next/previous with 10-second rewind/30-second forward, while you have playback speed on the left and a sleep timer on the right. Show “Details”/notes are found instead of Lyrics at the bottom, while the Up Next queue is unchanged. Meanwhile, the mini-player swaps out the next button for 30-sec, while the Android 13 media player adds playback speed controls that you can toggle through.
In search, you get filters for “Episodes” and “Podcasts” with equivalent sections in the results list. This is rolling out to Android, iOS, and the web now.
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