Google has released Google Podcasts, a standalone app meant to provide you with all of your favourite podcasts right at your fingertips. There are also recommendation algorithms in the app, which will recommend content based on the podcasts you already listen to.
Personalized recommendations are one of the main benefits of the new Google Podcasts app. The algorithms provided by Google will give you suggestions on what other podcasts you might like. These algorithms use your own listening habits to recommend other content you might enjoy.
There have been many third-party apps available to listen to podcasts while on Android. You also could have used Google Play Music to listen to podcasts, but this is a new standalone podcast app brought to you by Google itself. Google Podcasts is expected to bring in millions of new podcast listeners from all over the world.
There’s still tons of room for growth when it comes to podcast listening,” said Zack Reneau-Wedeen, product manager on the app.
Creating a native first-party Android app for podcasts “could as much as double worldwide listenership of podcasts overall
Google Podcasts looks a lot like many other podcast apps out there, including the ability to quickly search for a new podcast to listen to. We have even more details about the standalone app, and we wanted to tell you more about that too.
This app is going to look very similar to other podcast apps you probably have been using. That is a good thing if you are looking for something easy to navigate. You can quickly search for the podcast you want to listen to, and then download it. There are going to be over 2 million podcasts available in the beginning, with more podcasts being added later on. All of the most popular podcasts are going to be within the app when it launches.
There will be the “For You” section, which will allow you to see the newest episodes of all of the podcasts that you were subscribed to. You will also see in this section the episodes that you started but have not completed. There will also be the list of all episodes that were downloaded.
Beyond that, at the bottom of this section will be both trending podcasts and top podcasts. You can see these by both the category and just in general. Using the podcast player might be a little different, since it does not have all of the controls some other podcast apps have. Skip buttons are not available for customization, and you also cannot create a podcast playlist.
Google Assistant is also part of the app, which means you can both play and search for the podcasts by using Assistant if you have it enabled. All Google products will also be able to sync the podcasts, so you can listen to the podcasts no matter which Google product or service you have. You can use Google Home too, so you have a ton of options when it comes to syncing and getting back to that podcast you were listening to.
There will be more features coming to Google Podcasts in the future, including the ability to add closed captions. Another feature coming later will be live transcriptions read in real-time, with the option to choose any language you wish. Google also is looking to find ways to promote podcasts that are flying under the radar due to all of the big names out there with a podcast.
When it comes to Google Podcasts, it looks like it will be an Android-exclusive app, since the company does not have plans to bring this app to iOS.
