Google will discontinue the Podcasts app in 2024

Google will discontinue the Podcasts app in 2024. That app has existed since the end of 2018, but Google says it wants to invest in YouTube Music. YouTube Music contains podcasts in the United States; This should be possible worldwide by the end of this year.

Company wants to invest next year in the podcast experience on YouTube Music’ and therefore says it will discontinue the separate Podcasts app later in the year. Presumably the company does not want to keep two podcast apps up and running. According to Edison research, about 23 percent of weekly U.S. podcast listeners use YouTube, while 4 percent use Google Podcasts.

Google is working on a transition tool to enable the migration of Podcasts to YouTube Music, including the ability to add podcast RSS feeds to YouTube Music to listen to podcasts not hosted on YouTube. Google also wants to make it possible for Podcasts users to download an opml file with the list of podcasts to which the user is subscribed. This file can then be uploaded into other podcast apps if the user does not want to switch to YouTube Music.