June 23 2024 saw the cessation of Google Podcasts in Australia. If you’re like me you’ve received many reminders in your inbox to ‘manage your subscriptions’ so as to be prepped for D Day. You have till July 29 to migrate your podcast show subscriptions to YouTube Music and a further 12 months to salvage any data you wish to keep.
Google owns YouTube, the second most visited website in the world behind their own Google search. With the increasing reach of YouTube across video, music, news, documentaries, live streams, vlogs, TV and film, it was only a matter of time, with podcasters increasingly using a visual element, before YouTube incorporated podcast play out to its repertoire.
A YouTube blog from September last year said:
“23% of weekly podcast users in the US say YouTube is their most frequently used service, versus just 4% for Google Podcasts.”
So to keep Google Podcasts and a YouTube podcast option must have seemed like double handling from Google’s parent company Alphabet Inc.
A great many successful Youtubers have podcast shows and channels too. Perhaps the biggest star of them all, MrBeast, who is currently in Australia. has his own podcast, as well as recently purchasing a podcast network too. Perhaps the next step for YouTube Podcasts is exclusive deals with people like MrBeast to offer all of their different channel output in the one place, under a subscription model. MrBeast currently has 289 million subscribers just on YouTube.
Jen Seyderhelm is a writer, editor and podcaster for Radioinfo.