For anyone not in the US, using Podcasts in Google Play Music hasn’t been an option. Today Google is finally offering an easy way to get access to podcasts with a new app launching for Android.
The app is a front-end for the Podcasts player in Google Assistant and it leverages the reach of the Assistant on your various devices to let you search for and play podcasts on any of those devices. This means you can continue playing a podcast you had on your phone on your Google Home when you get home, or vice-versa when you leave.
Google intends to have more than 2 million podcasts available on the app, which is only for Android, at launch. Google’s AI will also tie-in offering recommendations from this library of podcasts based on your listening habits.
As part of the launch, Google has also promised to help promote podcasts from more diverse sources including encouraging more podcasts hosted by women and people of colour. They’ll be forming an advisory board with people in the podcast industry with the goal of ‘enabling skills development and experimentation from underrepresented voices, as well as cultivating ideas and processes that can scale throughout the industry.
Google sees themselves in the podcast game for the long haul, offering up examples of what users can expect in the future. Google says they’ll be offering automatic subtitling for podcasts in the future to aid hearing impaired users, or users in a noisy area without headphones. Google is also looking to provide automatic translations as part of the subtitling offering as they improve their technology.
The app is now live in Google Play, so head over and install it now and see what you think.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.apps.podcasts
