Google Podcasts shutting down in 2024 for YouTube Music

Abner Li | Sep 26 2023 - 6:13 am PT

YouTube Music will be Google’s one podcasting app and service going forward, with Google Podcasts set to go away in 2024.

Google announced today that it’s “discontinuing Google Podcasts” sometime in 2024. As part of this, podcasts in YouTube Music will be picking up a number of updates, including full global availability before the end of 2023. It’s currently available in the United States, Canada, and Latin America.

The big advantage of Google Podcasts was its simplicity and wide availability on Android (through the Google Search app).

A “simple migration tool” will move your existing subscriptions from Google Podcasts. Notably, there will be the ability in YouTube Music to add podcasts via RSS feeds, “including shows not currently hosted by YouTube.” Google will also provide a non-YTM export option via “OPML file of their show subscriptions” that will work with other podcast players.

Top comment by Hess

Liked by 51 people

While I understand the reasons behind this, I have a appreciation for the simplicity of Google Podcasts, and I find it a bit disheartening to see it go. This also leads me to wonder if there's another company that continually pushes for users to migrate to a different service. I'm confident that people will still be using Apple Podcasts five years from now, but I have my doubts about Podcasts on YouTube Music enduring for that long.

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On the podcaster front, YouTube will allow for RSS uploads instead of requiring a video version.

The next step over the coming weeks and months will see Google “gather feedback to make the migration process from Google Podcasts to YouTube Music as simple and easy as possible.”

Once we feel the migration tools are ready, we’ll release them along with clear guidelines on how they work.

In the short term, Google Podcasts will continue to work:

For now, nothing is changing and fans will continue to have access to YouTube, YouTube Music and Google Podcasts. We’re committed to being transparent in communicating future changes with our users and podcasters and will have more to share about this process in the coming months.

Overall, in 2024, Google will be “increasing [its] 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.”