YouTube Music is missing too many podcast basics

The best part of Google Podcasts was its simplicity . Google built a service that was fairly basic in terms of layout/navigation and functionality, but the app didn’t feel barebones. It had everything a podcasting client needed and those that wanted something more advanced could easily switch to another application thanks to the openness and portability of RSS.

9to5Google has a rebooted newsletter that highlights the biggest Google stories with added commentary and other tidbits. Sign up to get it early in your inbox, or continue reading 9to5Google Log Out below: Last May, I called YouTube Music a laid back podcasts app that reflected the casualness of the broader music streaming service: I think there’s an audience for a simple podcasting client, but I don’t think YTM has that balance eight months later.

The thing YouTube Music always had working against its podcast ambitions is that it’s trying to jam an entirely different audio medium into an existing (shorter form) service. (I joked about the app getting renamed to “ YouTube Audio .”) I see the appeal of having one app, with people clearly not minding as seen by Spotify’s success, but I think the podcasts experience suffers for not being as prominent or optimized as the music side.

There’s simply no way to translate Google Podcasts’ navigation simplicity into YouTube Music. (An amusing and horrifying aside: Imagine a Podcasts tab in the YouTube Music bottom bar with a second floating bar, a la Google Chat in integrated Gmail .) My next issue is with the feature set. Since YouTube Music introduced the ability to manually add podcasts via RSS in November, I’ve been using the app a great deal more since most podcasts have not been creating video versions just for YouTube.

I’m fine with YTM’s Now Playing UI, especially after the gradient redesign , but the lack of other basic features is getting ridiculous. I’ve been asking for the ability to mark episodes as played since May, and Google in December said to expect that in the coming months. It’s really a basic podcast client feature to help manage your library.

Playing a podcast and dragging the scrubber all the way to clear it from the “New Episodes” playlist is a ridiculous hack. A more minor ask is support for podcast chapters, which I’m actually hopeful for given that there’s an equivalent video feature. Meanwhile, YouTube Music needs new episode notifications.

One underrated feature of Google Podcasts was that the parent company’s vast server/cloud infrastructure meant episode alerts were instantaneous. YTM needs per show notifications instead of just relying on the “Your new episodes” carousel in the Home feed. I’m surprised YouTube decided to expand internationally without something as basic as this since it would encourage people to keep using the app for podcasts.

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