YouTube podcasts are now available in the US and are part of YouTube Music

Podcasts will be included in YouTube Music rather than being added separately to YouTube, YouTube Music, YouTube Kids, and YouTube TV. Google says application webcast support is carrying out in the US now. The move comes after the online launch of youtube.com/podcasts last year.

YouTube Music receives a lot of criticism for being extremely limited unless you pay for it. Google paywalls features like background playback and offline playback, but the company claims that these features are free for podcasting and that “This podcast listening experience is different from our music listening experience.”

Obviously, podcasts have been uploaded to YouTube by users ever since, despite the absence of official support from Google. On the official track, however, it seems simple to set up, even for old content. On YouTube, podcasts are nothing more than video playlists marked with the special flag “podcast.” Creators can tag existing playlists in YouTube Studio as podcasts to display the episodes on the podcast pages and in the YouTube Music app. At the time of upload, adding new material to your existing podcast playlist is also simple. The inclusion of a specialized square podcast thumbnail is the only real requirement. Currently, RSS feeds cannot be used to upload audio, but Google says it will in the future.

Google states that it will begin promoting podcasts on the YouTube Music app’s “Home” and “Explore” pages. The demo screenshots highlight popular shows and episodes and include several categories that users can browse. YouTube Premium users, who pay a fee to not see ads, will still have to deal with baked-in podcast ads. However, all of the usual ways to monetize YouTube are still available. It doesn’t appear to be feasible to pay for promotion free webcasts at the present time.

According to Google, podcasts will soon be available in additional nations. Google Podcasts, the company’s other podcast app at the moment, is still unknown, but a shutdown is probably inevitable. This is Google’s fourth attempt at podcasting after Google Tune in (2009-2012), Google Play Music Webcasts (2016-2020), and Google Digital broadcasts (2018).