Google announced recently that it is shuttering Google Podcasts and moving the content to its YouTube Music app.
This move is not exactly surprising since other streaming platforms like Spotify and Apple Music have combined both music and podcasts on their platforms for years
YouTube Music was first launched in 2015 as a replacement for Google Play Music.
The original offering was free, but a Premium version allowed users to access the entire YouTube platform.
YouTube Music now comes with a $10.99 monthly fee.
But the service has struggled to grow against other competitors such as Spotify which maintains a dominant 30% market share over other competition.
YouTube Music is fifth with 8% behind Apple Music, Amazon Music, and Chinese streamer Tencent Music.
Google Podcasts was launched in 2018 for Android users, and later for iOS users in 2020.
However, the separate offering failed to get the number of users that Google hoped for versus the listeners going to YouTube Music.
In a move seen to telegraph the demise of the Podcast service, Google began to offer its podcasts through YouTube Music for free earlier this year.
Google will provide a tool to help users migrate their podcasts over to YouTube Music and will close the doors to the service completely later in 2024.
As part of this announcement, Google said that it would be increasing its spending on original podcast content.
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