Google is officially shutting down the Google Podcasts app from April 2. The shutdown, initially announced in September 2023, marks yet another discontinued project in Google’s history. The Podcasts app was a popular choice which has over 500 million downloads worldwide.

Now that the Podcasts app is going away, Google is encouraging listeners to relocate to YouTube Music for their podcast fix. This, as per Google, is to create a “better overall destination” for listeners and creators. It promises YouTube-centric features around community, discovery, and the ability to switch seamlessly between audio and video content.

How to Move From Google Podcasts to YouTube Music

If you are a Google Podcasts user, fear not! Your subscriptions aren’t lost forever.  Google has provided instructions on how to smoothly transfer your subscriptions to YouTube Music. Here’s what you need to do:

• Export from Google Podcasts: Open the Podcasts app and tap “Export subscriptions” followed by “Export under ‘Export to YouTube Music'”.
• Import to YouTube Music: Open the YouTube Music app, select “Transfer,” “Continue,” and finally “Go to Library” once the transfer completes.

Important Notes:

• Transferring subscriptions may take a few minutes.
• Not all podcasts may be available on YouTube Music. You may need to use the show’s RSS feed link to resubscribe in those cases.
• You have until July 2024 to complete this migration.

While many will likely continue their podcast journeys on YouTube Music, the shutdown of Google Podcasts marks the end of a well-received app. 

As with many past discontinuations, Google’s reasoning for shuttering a successful product remains somewhat unclear to the user base. We’ll have to wait and see if this change will be good for podcasters and their loyal listeners.

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Google Podcasts is one of the many free services offered by Google. It debuted as an Android application in June 2018. Nearly three years after its launch, the app has achieved a huge milestone that other podcast app developers could have ever dreamt of.

Back in November 2020, the Google Podcasts Android app became the first podcasts app to hit 50 million installs on the Play Store. Now, only about five months later, this number has doubled.

As a result, Google Podcasts has become the first-ever podcast app to reach over 100 million downloads on the Play Store. For comparison, most other popular podcast apps are only around 10 million+ to 1 milllion+ mark.  It is worth noting that we are only talking about standalone dedicated podcast apps.

Almost a year after the release of the Google Podcasts Android app, a web version of the service was announced at Google I/O 2019. At the end of that year, the Android application was not only uplifted with the material theme but also got dark mode.

The Google Podcasts now even has an iOS app, which was released in March 2020. In other words, Google’s free-to-use podcast service is available on all the popular platforms.

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The post Google Podcasts is the first podcast app to reach over 100 million downloads on Play Store appeared first on Gizmochina.