Get set to experience podcasts on the Google Home
Google has finally come up with a standalone podcasts app in the Play Store. The app is called Google Podcasts. It will use Google’s recommendation algorithms to integrate people with shows they might enjoy based on their listening habits. Prior to this, the podcasts were available on Android through Google Play Music and third-party apps. But with this dedicated app, Google expects to bring the millions of new listeners into one place.
The Google Play Store description of the app explains, “Google Podcasts is a new way for Android users to discover and listen to the world’s podcasts. You can subscribe to any show for free and download episodes for offline listening. All your listening is automatically synced across devices so you can pause on one device and resume on another with the Google Assistant.”
The new Google app is quite simple to use and brings all your favorite podcasts in one place. Once you install the app on your device, the Google app will toss up a list of podcasts which you may have searched for and played in the past. In the ‘For You’ section, you will see three tabs, namely, 'New episodes,' 'In Progress', and 'Downloads.’ It will display new episodes of shows you’ve subscribed to, downloaded episodes, and episodes you haven’t finished yet.
Zack Reneau-Wedeen, Product Manager on the app, said, “There’s still tons of room for growth when it comes to podcast listening. Creating a native first-party Android app for podcasts “could as much as double worldwide listenership of podcasts overall.”
The app will let you search for new podcasts, download them, and play them at your convenience. Furthermore, Google app will also throw up the top and trending podcasts for the user. The searched podcasts split the podcasts into various other categories like Comedy, Society & Culture, News & Politics, Sports & Recreation, and few more.
In a much-expected gambit, the Podcast app is integrated with Google Assistant. This will let you search and play podcasts wherever you have Assistant enabled devices. The user’s podcast preferences will be synced over all the Google products. It means you can resume your paused track at your home that you were listening in the office. That sounds cool. I have my favorite number on the Podcast. What’s yours?
