Back in 2018, Google Podcasts was released and millions of users preferred this service to listen to audio content like biopics, interviews, conversations, stories, documentaries, and more. But, unfortunately, Google Podcasts is shutting down in the US almost five years of its launch. To be precise, it has already shut down in the United States region because Google is focusing more on YouTube Music as their primary podcasting service in the future.
Talking about the ‘YouTube Music’, it has officially launched to offer podcasts in the USA last year. Google focused on implementing additional features and general stability improvements to YouTube Music in 2023. Though YouTube Music lacks multiple functions and user-specific options as compared to other music platforms, we’re expecting that more features and improvements will arrive soon.
Last year in September 2023, Google hinted that Google Podcasts would shut down soon. But the exact timeline was missing. However, the same kind of rumors and assumptions were made since 2021. Now, users are getting the notification that “Google Podcasts is no longer available” splash screen on all devices. Several users have reported the same today (Thursday) 4th April 2024.
We can assume that more regions will also follow this shutdown soon. However, there is no hint or announcement pushed yet for other countries. Luckily, Google Podcasts offers an Export subscription feature that allows existing users to migrate to YouTube Music subscription or users can even download an OPML file to transfer their subscriptions to another application until July 30, 2024. However, some users claim the official Google Podcasts website is still working fine.
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Currently, YouTube Music hasn’t yet rolled out the ‘mark as played’ functionality as mentioned earlier. Meanwhile, YouTube Music is also missing other basic podcasting features such as new episode notifications. One thing we need to agree that the YouTube Music interface won’t be as good as Google Podcasts. It seems that Podcasts users prefer to have a simple and useful user interface with all required options.
So, it’ll be interesting to see YouTube Music become effective and simple as the time will go on. But RIP to Google Podcasts for not being able to survive in the competition for a long time.
