This would be a great moment for The Onion to run a headline like “Google plans to sunset Gmail, migrate users to YouTube Music.”
“Google plans to require a YouTube Premium subscription to allow users to search while minimized, industry leak claims”
I think that one might cause some real pandemonium in that far too many people would think it’s legit.
That should be a very strong indication about how little faith people have in Google now.
It used take one single troll to pull it off… back when twitter existed and had any sort of legitimacy.
Why would you need Gmail? Just share messages through Google docs
'No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Business Where This Regularly Happen
I never really explored non-FOSS podcast services, did it offer anything in particular over something like AntennaPod? Is some content exclusive?
Many paid/non-FOSS apps provide more features then AntennaPod, or have better layouts, but AntennaPod is one of the FOSS apps that is close enough to being what I really want, that I use it over the rest.
The one feature missing that I’m really baffled by is the ability to customize how your podcasts page is laid out, so hopefully they get around to it one of these days.
Just downloaded it yesterday. Is there some way to get it to cast to other devices (eg Alexa, Nest, TV, etc)?
On an android device you can use Google Home app to run casting.
No. Google podcasts is very basic minimalistic app.
Dear Google.
YouTube Music is shit. Stop trying to combine your other services into YouTube music.
Google Play Music was good. Google Podcasts was… not awful
YouTube Music is the worst of both services.
Just stop
As someone who loves Google Podcasts this sucks. Fuck YouTube Music and I miss my Google Music.
As a YouTube Music subscriber (because of yt premium): “stop trying to make YouTube music a thing. It’s not going to happen”.
What is the complaint about YouTube music. I got it for free and it’s pretty good. Maybe not perfect but I don’t big beef about it.
This is why Google will forever be behind Apple. Any app that can’t be monetised gets killed. Why give Android users a stable ecosystem after all? Fuck the users. Google fucking sucks.
To be fair the Apple podcast app kind of sucks too, its just the most convenient one to use since it comes pre installed.
It’s more the principal that Google doesn’t care about their ecosystem or users. There would be uproar if Apple killed their podcasts app, since it has been around for so long. But Android users are just used to this shit now.
My preferred podcast app (stitcher) shit down in August and I was about to move to google podcasts.
I am an idiot.
I hate it when my apps shit down. 🤣
It’s not like podcast players are particularly complex to build and maintain, so they don’t require that much cashflow. Podbean sustains itself quite well with the odd image ad and AntennaPod is FOSS. I think the problem is more the opposite, since competition is so easy and monetising it would suck interest out of it, Google has no interest in actually competing. Which is why they’re trying to build their own walled garden with uploading your podcasts only directly to YouTube, RSS feeds be damned.
Killing google play music didn’t make me switch to youtube music, same here
Why are they forcing users to YouTube Music anyway? They could improve the product before killing all of their other services.
YouTube Music doesn’t even remember where you left off. Switch to your phone? Music queue is gone. Close the tab? Music queue is gone. Anything other than an algorithm curated playlist will make you have a shit experience on YouTube Music.
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But… google podcasts was already owned by them. They aren’t gaining any users by doing this
They could at least kept google play music for buying digital music
Exactly. YT Music of such a trash interface compared to Google Play Music that I actually bothered to try Spotify when they killed GPM. They’re not accomplishing their goals here
Good news: you never needed Google Podcasts to begin with. Antenna Pod is a Free Open Source app that won’t track your every move and just works.
I’ve been using it since I switched to Android about 10 years ago, and while it took some time to get the UX right, I really couldn’t recommend it more now.
What an awesome app. Really, it’s unusual to see an open source app be so polished. Thanks for the recommendation.
I never knew about this app, thanks for the recommendation!
Doesn’t just work for me. When I’m playing a podcast on Android auto, leave the car, come back, there’s no way to resume the podcast.
On every other app, there’s a little floating icon in the bottom right of the screen that you tap to get to the now playing, so you can resume, but antenna pod doesn’t have that.
I am sorry to hear that. I don’t personally use Android Auto, so that’s a situation I’m not familiar with. I am also sorry to see people downvoting your comment just because you report a bad experience, that doesn’t help anyone.
I would recommend opening an issue about it on the project page in GitHub. Another advantage of FOSS apps is that developers are usually easer to reach for feedback and support, although I must say I don’t have experience with the AntennaPod developers.
Does it work with Android Auto voice commands?
Sorry, I don’t use Android Auto so I don’t know about this feature. You could check on their GitHub page and even open an issue if there is no support.
I love that one. And also PocketCast.
Why is Google trying to follow the model of Spotify even though the model is not really successful? I hate when browsing my music in Spotify some podcast pops up. I just want to listen to my music, dammit!
Google Play Music users: “
First600th time?”-
Google employee 1: We made podcasts in Play Music better and adoption went up again.
-
Google manager: Oh, that’s neat. I’ll make a bullet point on this week’s team meeting.
-
Google employee 2: We spent many millions on a new podcast app and servers, engineering, data migration, PR, integrations
and adoption is lower. Actually, nobody wanted it or cares or likes it. -
Google VP: Everyone this can’t fail. Pick the best looking metrics, prepare a series of announcements and get ready for a wave of promotions and it’s all thanks to this superstar manager who’s definitely getting a huge bonus and double promotion so I can spin this like it was a win. The best part? Get ready for a repeat when we replace this again in 2 to 3 years.
-
Do they have a script that they must follow? Why every single time they need to kill a product BEFORE having a fucking replacement???
Why they couldn’t implement podcasts in yt music and then kill Google podcasts?
Why. Every. Single. Time. They need to kill a product BEFORE the replacement is ready???
I’m guessing right now every dev with a podcasting app on the play store is popping champagne from the huge influx of Google podcasts refugees
AntennaPod is great.
Nice! Full support for recommendations in my language!
Go for AntennaPod. FOSS and works great
It’s still up right now, they plan to kill it by 2024 and YTMP will supposedly be online by then. I suppose this has to do with reallocating their developers and avoiding redundant apps. Not that they’re consistent with the latter.
Uuuh, podcasts have been available in YouTube music for a while.
one suggestion: pocketcasts
BeyondPod is paid but pretty decent.
At this point it’s on you if you put any faith in any Google product aside from Search/YT/Adtech to last longer than a couple of years.
Best case scenario: They forget about whatever product you like and it’s allowed to continue running for years with zero updates.
Most likely scenario: They kill it off to merge into another product line that overlaps with a third of the features only to do the exact same thing again within a year or two.
Oh Google.
They kicked everyone off Google Music to go to YT Music and Google Podcasts. Now they’re killing Google Podcasts and telling people to go to YT Music.
If YT Music wasn’t linked with my YouTube Premium subscription, I would never use it.
I decided to cancel both. YT Music deleted my music that they don’t have in their global library, and they fucked up the sorting of my liked playlist. Going back to buying music a la carte and storing it myself.
I’m old school, but music that isn’t in a file stored on one of my devices doesn’t actually exist for me.
I’m even more old school, music that isn’t cut into vinyl doesn’t exist for me.
(not really, because it’d be very impractical)
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I sometimes decide to try out YouTube Music for playing some of the music I have saved on YT in a more music focused UI.
Then I go back straight back to regular YouTube, because half the songs/music can’t be played in YT Music (including offical music on official channels).
I feel like I get some good value out of YT Premium, but I don’t understand YT Music.
Interesting use case.
I’m opposite. I want 0 video functionality in the app and just want audio. When they made the YouTube integration more visible I started getting the ick.
And, at least for me, the recommendation is by far better, than Spotify was. I had Spotify premium, liked a lot of songs, tried to use it regularly. And when it went on its on after my playlist finished, 5 out of 10 recommended songs were…shit. No matter how much I tried to like or disklike songs. When they started current YT Music (after the Play Music shutdown), I tried it and it was leagues better from the get-go (the recommendations, that is). I assume that’s because they have my 10+ years old YT history. Anyway, I cancelled Spotify and happily use YT Music.
I’m well aware that it could be different for everybody.
“what if we made it so everybody had to pay to turn off their screens even if there was no video or music!”
But… that didn’t and doesn’t apply to YouTube Music, only to YouTube, right?
It’s just as stupid as you fear. Music stops when you close your screen.
Great music player, Google.
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Oh don’t worry they’ll find a way
Fortunately when they killed the podcasts out of Google Play Music I switched to Podcast Addict and never looked back.
I honestly feel bad for the guys assigned to work on this dead-end project.
And considering the buggy, infuriating mess that YTM is and that team is being rewarded with expanded scope, I wonder what dirt they have on Sundar.
Okay, it isn’t just me who find YTM buggy.
As a music player, could it please play music? Jesus.
I have 4 people that use it on my account, it plays music just fine. Makes playlists, finds similar artist, View artist/album on long press, add to current list now or at the end, etc…
Actually has some interesting and unique features (like I can add stuff from youtube app or desktop even to a playlist and it will be in the playlist on TYM later on.)
What does it not do for you?
For starters, it won’t stop raping my data with video plays and downloads, even though I tell it not to do anything without wifi.
It also seems to ‘shuffle’ the same newest 40 songs or so, out of my 1000s of liked songs. Could never understand why, I just want random not algorithm random.
Ahhh, I literally never use the shuffle/random feature so I definitely dont know about that.
If I am on a 20 minutes drive I need the damn thing to keep playing music for 20 minutes, not just randomly stop playing halfway through a song. YTM does that. Spotify doesn’t. Nor does my other background players.
Huh, never had that one I dont think. I wonder what that is
My wife runs into this too but my phone never stops, it’s odd.
I mean GPM was buggy too, but it was just unstable and slow. YTM just has boneheaded bugs. I’ve started running wearing a WearOS watch and it can’t even list more than 100 albums in my library, so I can’t download any albums alphabetically after Love Songs Drug Songs by the X Ambassadors.
I had a fun bug for awhile on GPM were playing my library on shuffle it would mostly play songs that started with P. A 30 minute car ride would have 3 songs that started with P and the other 5-6 would be more random.
Which bugs have you got? I don’t remember any issue, that said the Spotify apps are much better.
Music would randomly stop playing. I can just continue it, no error or warning. Spotify doesn’t do that, nor does other background media players.
Also the fact that the ongoing notification always disappears. YouTube and all other media playing stay there forever. A minute after I’m done playing music, it’s like YTM was never there.
Fuck! I liked Google podcasts due to the android auto integration! I am not willing to install yt music on my phone.
I recommend Pocket Casts.
Thanks, seems nice 👍
I’ve been using Podcast Republic for a while and it’s solid. Works great with AA.
Great dev too! I suggested a few improvements awhile back, and not only did he respond back, he had it implemented within the next update. And a one time payment instead of a subscription, which automatically makes this highly customizable app better than most of its peers.
To be honest I only tried it because it was on Play Pass but it’s been great.
I have premium and I can’t use Youtube without video on Android auto. That needs to change.
Google is now my least favorite company.
Why? That one actually makes sense to consolidate.
Youtube music is hot garbage.
Not going to down vote you for disagreeing. I think the frustrations stem from the constant closure of apps. Whether it makes sense or not, it is annoying getting invested into a service and then it gets pulled away. I would say it’s essentially inevitable that any app or service you use today will lose support at some point. Google has a track record now of closing apps fairly early. I’m already finding that YouTube Music is getting features that I have no interest in using.
That is understandable.
I am using Spotify and my only true reliance on Google are their most successful products being YT, Android and Google Play store.
So my experience with Google isnt that bad but I am totally aware of thr general sentimemt with that company.
I could understand consolidation when you’re as big as google and lot of these one-off apps (Duo, Allo, Podcasts, Measure, Hangouts, etc.) are all clearly just testing grounds for either specific features eventually destined for their mainline apps, or just neat ideas that never caught on and couldn’t be monetized enough to warrant keeping the service alive.
The real issue is: they almost NEVER actually make the “consolidated” app reach feature parity with the one it gets folded into.
That’s also my reasoning.
The real issue is: they almost NEVER actually make the “consolidated” app reach feature parity with the one it gets folded into.
Yep.
