This would be a great moment for The Onion to run a headline like “Google plans to sunset Gmail, migrate users to YouTube Music.”
'No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Business Where This Regularly Happen
“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.
It used take one single troll to pull it off… back when twitter existed and had any sort of legitimacy.
That should be a very strong indication about how little faith people have in Google now.
Why would you need Gmail? Just share messages through Google docs
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)?
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
I loved Google play music as a locker for my owned music and a a storefront to buy what I wanted. YouTube Music made me abandon it completely and move my owned music onto my plex server.
Why does Google have to ruin everything? Still bitter about Google Reader closing back in the day. That was the beginning of the end of me having confidence in their services and moving to self hosting as much as I can.
Google Music was the only place I bought music digitally other than iTunes, and I used it religiously. I downloaded all of my personal music uploaded to Google Music before it closed with the intention of running my own Plex server. A friend who works IT security scared me into not running an externally-accessible Plex server.
So I fight with the YouTube Music app being complete dogshit on CarPlay. If you think the app is bad on mobile, just try the CarPlay version. Unusable.
As someone who loves Google Podcasts this sucks. Fuck YouTube Music and I miss my Google Music.
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. 🤣
Killing google play music didn’t make me switch to youtube music, same here
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.
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.
-
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
Nah, I’ll migrate to podbean or something else that allows me to listen with the app minimized.
YouTube Music allows the app to be minimized, AFAIK.
It’s standard YouTube (non-premiun) that requires the app to be in the foreground.
You can use the YouTube music app with a standard (free) YouTube account, at least on iOS. But the audio only keeps playing in the background if you pay for YouTube music. And I think you can’t download music to play offline.
For what it’s worth, YouTube Premium ($14/ month) includes YouTube music and removes ads for YouTube.
Yt-dlp, Ublock Origin and Newpipe all cost $0 tho
Having YouTube premium means I can use it on any platform. I can use YouTube music on my phone with CarPlay and listen while driving, use the built-in YouTube app that hotel TVs have when I travel for work, watch things on my work computer, on my phone, or using my PS5.
Its a but hacky, but if you disable the youtube app, install firefox and then its “video background player” addon, you can listen to youtube videos/music minimized without paying.
Share to - - > Newpipe Sponsorblock also works.
You can also use YouTube in desktop mode in Firefox
Or install YouTube revanced, and get rid if ads too.
Seems to vary depending on whether I’m attempting to listen to music on my device (“attempting to” is the right word as it takes 15 seconds to load each individual song as it goes through a playlist) or listen to a YouTube video. It can go further into the background if it’s music on my device, no further back than a big window drawn over the screen if it’s a podcastable video, and must be in the foreground for a video IIRC.
Does Google Podcasts really not support that? Because that’s like… the basics.
The current Podcasts app does, but Youtube doesn’t unless you pay for premium. After the migration, if that policy doesn’t change, google’s platform of the week will be useless for podcasts.
YouTube Music is a different app altogether, on mobile devices at least.
YouTube music allows background playback
Podcasts does but not YouTube unless you pay for a subscription
Google Podcasts does, but background play is a premium feature on YouTube Music.
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.
I’m totally on board them getting investigated for antitrust and monopolistic practices. Google has really turned to shit the last 4-5 years.
Well fuck me, why? Why oh why? It’s such a clean and simple app, no weird shit and of course it gets axed. I think I may just stop listening to podcasts then, much easier than switching to an app I have no interest in.
AntennaPod is great, free, and has no ads. Pretty sure it’s open source too.
I might have to check it out, thanks!
Open source indeed: github.com/AntennaPod
I’ve been using Pocket Casts for years. Works great.
I was having some problems with Google podcasts (which I used for years) and switched to Pocket Casts. It’s been great other than some kind of clunky bits when trying to add to/edit your play-next queue, but otherwise I think it’s a pretty great transition from Google
Yeah the queue is a bit unintuitive. Mostly I just set it to play the next episode of the same podcast.
PodcastAddict is my go-to, with the caveat that it’s absolutely chock full of nerd knobs.
To copy Spotify?
Or to satiate the soul harvester at the Google Graveyard.
