Google Podcasts is heading to the Google graveyard

If you liked having your podcasts and music separated, you’re not going to like today’s news. Google will be discontinuing the Google Podcasts app next year and will transition podcasts to YouTube Music. A move that will make the YouTube Music vs Spotify debate that much more difficult.

In a blog post, Google announced it is “discontinuing Google Podcasts.” The app will continue to work until sometime in 2024. However, the tech giant doesn’t give an exact date for when the app will be shut down.

For now, nothing is changing and fans will continue to have access to YouTube, YouTube Music and Google Podcasts.

What will be replacing the Google Podcasts app will be the YouTube Music app. Google states that it will be increasing its investment in the podcast experience on YouTube Music in 2024, giving users capabilities only found through YouTube.

For those who are worried about losing their subscriptions, Google says it will offer a “simple migration tool and the ability to add podcast RSS feeds to their YouTube Music library.” This also includes shows that aren’t hosted by YouTube. And if you want to use a different platform, there will reportedly be an option to download an OPML file of your subscriptions that you can upload to an app that supports their import.

Although the announcement may come off as sudden, there were signs Google was slowly building up to this point. At the beginning of the year, Google Search was no longer displaying play buttons on podcasts linking to Google Podcasts. A few months later, Google brought podcast support to YouTube Music and didn’t require a paid membership to watch or listen, but it was only available in the US.

It is safe to say that YouTube Music is in store for a few updates in the coming months. Right now, podcast support on YouTube Music is only available in the US, Canada, and Latin America. Google says it’s aiming to have support globally available by the end of 2023.