Video and audio podcasts are coming to the YouTube Music app, the company has confirmed.
YouTube Music is bringing video and audio podcasts to its apps, the company has confirmed.
The new feature, which will reportedly allow listeners to switch between the video and audio versions of a podcast and will allow background listening, was announced by YouTube’s podcasting chief Kai Chuk.
YouTube Music then confirmed the addition in a statement provided to TechCrunch.
“We will soon start to bring both audio and video-first podcasts to YouTube Music for users in the U.S., making podcasts more discoverable and accessible, with more regions to come,” the spokesperson reportedly told TechCrunch. “This will help make the podcasts that users already love on YouTube, available in all the places they want to listen.”
The new podcast feature was announced during the Hot Pod Summit and will go far beyond the current YouTube podcasting situation. That normally boils down to either video versions of existing audio podcasts posted to the streamer, or straight video-only content that creators call podcasts despite there being no audio-only component.
Now, it sounds like YouTube Music will start pulling in actual podcasts using RSS, at least initially.
Perhaps interestingly, YouTube Music doesn’t look set to follow the same approach as other companies like Spotify – it doesn’t want to start to produce its own first-party content. There will be new podcast tools added to YouTube Studio, and later this year podcasters will be able to upload their content via RSS feeds directly into the platform.
As for cost, listeners won’t need to pay in order to take advantage of the new podcast integration. However, those who pay for YouTube Music won’t have to listen to the ads that the rest of us will be subjected to.
Whether or not people want to listen to their podcasts via yet another app remains to be seen, but with so much competition already available in the App Store and Google Play Store, do we really need another option? Especially if there won’t be exclusive content to sweeten the deal.
