Google Podcasts to shut down in 2024

We have gone full circle. I started with Google Music which had both music and podcasts at the time. Then they took podcasts out of Google Music and made me install a second Google Podcast app just to listen to my podcasts. Then they shut down Google Music and forced me to move to YouTube Music. Now they are shutting down Google Podcasts and integrating that back into YouTube Music. Like WTF.

Google executive leaders must have been worried that users might start trusting Google&#x27;s apps again, so hatched this plan to maintain Google&#x27;s well-known reputation.<p>When looking at business leaders, it&#x27;s best to assume scary competence and that they always know what they&#x27;re doing. After all, if they weren&#x27;t impossibly better than us mere mortals, why would the market have granted them such high-paid CEO jobs?

I really like the simplicity of Google Podcasts, it does one thing and pretty well.<p>I&#x27;m also a Spotify user and despise have podcasts mixed with music, so bloated and clunky (also Spotify performance isn&#x27;t good), music and podcasts are different usecases for me, I&#x27;m on different mood.<p>I don&#x27;t want to jump to YouTube Music, and the last time I did a research, I can&#x27;t find a simple Podcast app that is free, simple, ad-free, and has desktop web+native phone app support like Google Podcasts.<p>I guess I have to have to pay _other_ subscription now :&#x2F;. Will try YouTube Music but I&#x27;m quite sure will not like it.<p>Note aside: I have YouTube Premium subscription for the ad-free experience, and has YouTube Music included, but to listen to music I prefer Spotify Premium _only_ because has a desktop app, I just can&#x27;t have Spotify on my browser tabs, and since I use Firefox I can&#x27;t install the pwa-webapp. If I can have installed the desktop app&#x2F;pwa-webapp I&#x27;m sure I will dich Spotify for sure. Sorry for the unrelated rant but I just remember that.

HN moderators: why was title changed from more accurate &quot;Google Podcasts to shut down in 2024 with listeners migrated to YouTube Music&quot; to misleading &quot;Google Podcasts to shut down in 2024&quot; ?

In a year or two somebody would realize that YT is for videos and it doesn&#x27;t make sense to keep music and podcasts there, and a new Google service is born... It&#x27;s the circle of life.

Unpopular opinion: i loved it and used it everyday, sad to see a lightweight app with no BS on any part of the screen die.

Google drastically needs portfolio management. The qualifications for this position should be very low, some very basic common sense would do.<p>I suppose they can get away with all of this because the concept of competing for a customer doesn&#x27;t really exist at Google. They can toy around without any consequences because they have a money printer.<p>Also, at Google&#x27;s current size, anything producing less than 1B in revenue per month is frankly not that interesting. Small stuff.

The state of podcasting software is kind of sad now. The initial concept behind podcasts with RSS feeds was so neat and freeing, but podcasts have been reigned into private services due to user convenience and existing market share for audio. Having Spotify handle podcast management for me is great and it&#x27;s handy but I would much rather have an agnostic app with inputs for RSS feeds. There are just so many podcasts that aren&#x27;t available via an RSS feed anymore though, continuing to push us into private apps.<p>I guess I&#x27;m not helping but I literally can&#x27;t for many podcasts now.

Why anyone would use a proprietary podcasting app is beyond me! (Particularly one from Google with basically had a 100% chance of getting canceled....)<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;antennapod.org&#x2F;" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;antennapod.org&#x2F;</a> is incredible! 10&#x2F;10, highly recommend!

Not so much killed as being rolled into YouTube Music

Google is lucky they have so many monopolistic elements in their business model, otherwise customers would be leaving left, right and center due to non-stop shutdowns of serives they launch.<p>Using a Google app, and investing any time whatsoever is a waste as it will be gone 6 months to 2 years down the road.<p>Seems like brutal PR to me, but they can get away with it.<p>It sounds like the service launches and shutdowns are incentivized anyway based on what other commenters are saying, so that would explain it.<p>Follow the money!

&lt;shameless&gt;I made a JavaScript function that can export Google Podcasts to OPML since they don&#x27;t have that feature. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;lucasrangit&#x2F;google-podcasts-export-opml">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;lucasrangit&#x2F;google-podcasts-export-opml</a> Please give it a try. Feedback welcome!&lt;&#x2F;shameless&gt;

&gt; The move will leave only Apple among the major players that hasn’t consolidated music and podcasts into a single destination<p>Apple just finished UNbundling everything from one monolithic app, now people want it back?

It&#x27;s astonishing the strategy that Google follows with their products. This trend of releasing stuff and cancelling it later is reaching the point of being meme. Don&#x27;t get me wrong, I totally understand that markets are hard to predict and compete in and offering a competent product at those sizes requires a lot of economic and human effort but for god sake, I seriously think they should plan better and think twice because this is seriously damaging their image.

TBH this doesn&#x27;t matter that much, as there are plenty of other great podcast apps that one can use. This is one of the things I love most about the podcast ecosystem is that (at least for now), it&#x27;s a very open platform with the exception of Spotify exclusives.

Good riddance, what a dumpster fire. The tiny buttons for pause, replay, skip buttons are all right next to each other on the lock screen, so you often skip podcasts when you really want to pause or fast forward. on the other hand, the rewind 10-seconds button has half the real estate of the widget. Downloads arent automatically deleted even after the episode is completed (even if you mark as played or remove from queue). There&#x27;s no skip intro&#x2F;outro options.<p>Frankly, the Overcast app is one of the main things attracting me to iOS at this point, and a dearth of good native podcast clients is hurting the Pixel&#x2F;Google ecosystem

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;killedbygoogle.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;killedbygoogle.com&#x2F;</a>

Off-topic: Would be great to have a way again to simply share links to podcast-episodes which work regardless of the used app.<p>Before the podcast-hype one could simply share the direct-link to the audio-file.<p>Now all you get are links which require Google&#x2F;Apple&#x2F;Spotify to open.<p>(But realistically, I don&#x27;t know who would be willing to drive this. It would need backing from at least Google&#x2F;Apple&#x2F;Spotify to maintain a central catalogue, and the incentive seems to be low...)

This is infuriating, I had just migrated from Stitcher to google Podcasts

Is nothing sacred at Google? Podcasts is a great simple app that does one thing well. I suppose that means Google had to kill it.

Does this mean that people who are paying for subscriptions to Youtube Music so they can listen to music will now be flooded with recommendations and ads for podcasts, just like on Spotify?

Original title: “Google Podcasts to shut down in 2024 with listeners migrated to YouTube Music“

There were Google Podcasts?

Against better judgement, I was using that.<p>Great...<p>Remember kids, never build anything onto Google.

Add it to the list: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;killedbygoogle.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;killedbygoogle.com&#x2F;</a>

Oh no, not that service I never used because I learned my lesson trusting Google with basic media organizational applications!<p>Seriously, it&#x27;s sad that they broke their reputation on this, but the writing was on the wall from day zero. If you&#x27;re an Android user, I recommend BeyondPod (<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.beyondpod.mobi&#x2F;android&#x2F;index.htm" rel="nofollow noreferrer">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.beyondpod.mobi&#x2F;android&#x2F;index.htm</a>): it&#x27;s simple, it&#x27;s reliable, it integrates to a search engine, and it also supports pasting in links with authentication so you can get any Patreon exclusive feeds you have access to (something that, to my knowledge, Google Podcasts was never able to support).

I hate that google shuts down their services so much. I was using Google Podcast a lot and then I switched to Pocket Casts a year ago. Luckily I have no dependency on it. I have so much notes on Google Keep that I am genuinely worried if they shut it down. They might give prior notice and I can easily export. I think except Search, Maps, Mail, YouTube anything else could be taken down any time. Same happening with their Domains. I was also using hangouts a lot. It just makes my so anxious to use any of their product. I have to use any google product keeping in mind that it could get shut down any day.

Why did Google fail to turn &quot;simple&quot; apps like Google Podcasts and Google Reader into low maintenance apps?<p>Google Podcasts is so simple it could even have been an open source reference app showcasing Flutter and some backend GCP services.

That&#x27;s an odd thing to do. My parents use it because it has &quot;Podcast&quot; in its name so it&#x27;s their go-to solution for listening to podcasts. I really doubt that they will click and go to a &quot;YouTube Music&quot; site or app in order to consume a simple podcast.<p>Google Podcasts is simple to use, one thing made with a clear, specific purpose, with an easy to use interface. They should keep it just to improve their brand recognition. But no... YouTube Music it is.

Remember Google Videos ???.<p>Could for the life not understand back then why Youtube and this existed at the same time.<p>It make sense - move all consumer content under the Youtube brand - hopefully the teams working on these products don&#x27;t have the same &quot;I got to start a new team to launch another shitty duplicated product in order for top management to notice and promote us.<p>The folks working on Youtube are doing great work even if most Googlers higher up might think it is so mundane and boring - it pays the bills.

After the demise of Google Play Music, I wrote <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;musicsync.ashishb.net" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;musicsync.ashishb.net</a><p>When the rumors of Google Podcasts being killed started circulating, I added podcast support to my app. In many cases matching or doing better than the Google Podcasts in terms of useful features.

I actually like the google podcasts app. It&#x27;s simple, it works, no ads, does everything I need it to do. Sigh. RIP.

(to migrate users to YouTube Music)<p>YT Music seems to be where Google Media apps shift their users to when they retire.<p>--<p>Must be fun to be on that dev-team:<p>&quot;We have a new high-priority ticket: Add podcast-support to inherit users from podcast app. Ok, so I guess we move the &#x27;Compete with Spotify&#x2F;AppleMusic&#x27; stories back to the funnel&quot;

I&#x27;m not necessarily super surprised, the uptake on Google Podcasts always seemed very low.

One way to avoid the mess that is Google Music app is to subscribe to your podcast on your RSS feed which provides much better organization than whatever is happening in Google Music. Its truly astonishing how bad this app is.

Podcast Addict is a great Android app for playing and keeping track of podcasts.

On a related note, we have a Google dot, and asking it to play a podcast, it ALWAYS resumes from the last episode I listened to in that podcast, often weeks old. I can’t get it to simply play the latest episode of random podcast

Would be good if Google made the URLs redirect for RSS feeds and libraries to seamlessly pickup.<p>I would suggest that anybody creating their own media hosts this in a variety of locations, and not rely on a single point of failure.

For a good list of podcasting apps by platform and feature: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;podcastindex.org&#x2F;apps" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;podcastindex.org&#x2F;apps</a>

This is why I scoff at folks who want rcs to be adopted everywhere. How can google be trusted to maintain anything past what seem like pretty consistent expiration dates?

Please raise your hands, who is surprised?

FFS.<p>How do I subscribe to Podcasts on an Android phone now?

Does this mean that to listen to a free podcast you need to have a youtube music subscription?

TIL Google had a podcasts app

Typical fate for a Google product that consumes RSS feeds.

I guess youtube music is youtube sound now?

How is it that we live in 2023 and apple’s native podcast app is pretty mediocre and now Google is killing one that was slightly better.

I definitely never saw this coming.

Google Podcasts seemed to source its feeds from more sources, maybe even the open internet, since podcasts are just RSS feeds, more or less. This led to a wider selection, like pirate streams with all the episodes of paywalled podcasts.

There it is.

Podcasting, like wikipedia, Linux, WWW and a few other relatively &quot;free&quot; objects are such an important counterexamples. There&#x27;s so much to learn from all of them, like theoretical devices come to life.<p>The inability of big services (EG, google, apple) to monopolize or gatekeep podcasting relates directly to their failure to make money.(1) the protocol&#x27;s minimal snooping options relates to the failure to implement <i>digital</i> adtech... and to the lack of good discovery&#x2F;recommendation services. The unique freedom capabilities podcasting seems to have. The barriers(2) to entry... all so interlocked.<p>Spotify&#x27;s big money attempt to make money off podcasting is&#x2F;was all about buying exclusivity. Paying big podcasters (eg rogan) to remove their podcast from other players... podcasts spotify already had free access to. Not shocking or surprising, but instructive. They very big money... more than anyone would likely invest on podcasting proper.<p>The market panic when netflix realised it was in a competitive market with price pressure from both consumers and producers because competition. How are you supposed to have 50% profit margins like that! Google would rather walk away from a market than concede anything short of full price setter mode on either end.<p>There&#x27;s this point where Peter Thiel and Karl Marx are finishing each other&#x27;s sentences and drinking Rum. I&#x27;m starting to think that point is a certain type of prevailing market condition. The rest is derivative.<p><i>&quot;Google says it plans on further increasing its investment in the podcast experience on YouTube Music and making it more of a destination for podcast fans with features focused on discovery, community, and switching between audio podcasts and video. The latter is something rival Spotify has also&quot;</i><p>Anyone remember the &quot;HD video race?&quot; Online video was obviously a big thing. Bandwidth &amp; quality were big problems receding as fast as broadband expanded. Google had an in-house video hosting service. They bought youtube. Other services still existed. Google effin plowed forward. They smoked everyone with their ability to implement HD streaming at massive scale. No one could keep up.<p>Now Google&#x27;s PR statements refer to breakthrough features like &quot;backgrounding video&quot; as a multi-year effort to reach feature parity with spotify. oy.<p>Google <i>can</i> successfully do many things. The are capable of making excellent products. I think they&#x27;re also capable of making many more economically viable products. However... the enormous profit margins they enjoy make anything short of monopoly pointless.<p>(1)Google literally sell ads on those same podcasts via youtube. (2) At some point, &quot;barrier to entry&quot; goes negative. Early blogging tech lowered barriers to entry. Referring to modern social media&#x27;s &quot;barriers&quot; feels like discussing the &quot;challenge&quot; of eating caramel popcorn dusted with coke.

It will relaunch as part of Google+ in 2025, along with a competing add-in to gmail that you have to pay to remove.

Another one bites the dust

Ffs... I am a really good predictor for what Google is killing next. I just started using it because it was preinstalled on the pixel and I was lazy.