The YouTube Music platform has given users the ability to listen to podcasts in the background for free. At the moment, the innovation is available only to the American audience of the service.
The rollout of the new feature comes months after YouTube’s head of podcasting, Kai Chuk, revealed that podcasts would soon be added to YouTube Music.
According to previous reports, YouTube has no plans to sign exclusivity deals with podcasters, which has been a key strategy for Spotify. Instead, YouTube appears to be focused on combining the podcast listening experience into video and audio formats.
The company said it plans to make podcasts on YouTube Music available to users outside the US soon, but did not provide any details on that.
Overall, YouTube Music can be seen copying the approach and interface elements of the standalone podcast app, also owned by Google. Whether they will exist in parallel, or the company will close the legacy Podcasts, is unclear.
The unpleasant thing is that only podcasts/channels that have uploaded video versions of episodes will be available in the new section. It is unclear whether this restriction will continue in the future, but it imposes serious restrictions, because not all podcast authors create two versions of their episodes at once.
There are still no exact dates for the worldwide launch. The company has now expanded availability from the US to Canada and Brazil with local language support.
You can listen to podcasts in the web version of the service, as well as in applications for iOS and Android. The catalog opens via the “Podcasts” shortcut on the main page or through the “Navigator” tab. Searching for shows uploaded to the site also works.
Final words
If you are planning to switch to any other music streaming service, then do not worry about the safety of your music collection; it can be easily transferred from one platform to another using a specialized application MusConv.
Read also: YouTube Music Recap – YouTube Music Stat.
