Hey, welcome to the first episode of a Podcast Industry News. In today's news, Google Podcasts is shutting down. Google Podcasts users received an email today indicating that the listening app, which was just launched five years ago, will be shutting down in 2024. Google plans to migrate all of these users to YouTube music. This aligns with Google's recent push to integrate podcasts into the platform. which began supporting podcasts earlier this year.
Many Android users were surprised by the announcement. Google Podcasts has been around since 2018 and was pre installed on Android devices, but for some reason inside Google's search app.
So despite Google Podcasts accumulating over 500 million downloads since its launch, it never captured a significant share of the podcast listening market. From Transistor's podcast hosting data, We can see that just over 2 percent of all downloads occurred on Google Podcasts, and data from Edison reveals that 23 percent of weekly podcast users in the US prefer YouTube as their go to service compared to just 4 percent of Google Podcasts users.
Still, Google's podcast strategy feels like it's all over the place. Back in May of 2020, Google announced that Google Podcasts would be replacing Google Play Music. Do you remember when you could listen to podcasts in Google Play Music? They said in the announcement, with this transition, we encourage podcast listeners to transfer their subscriptions and episode progress to Google Podcasts, our dedicated podcast player available for free on Android, iOS, and web.
Fast forward just three years, and Google is once again asking millions of its users to switch their podcasts from Google Podcasts to YouTube Music. So now with the tech giant placing its podcast bets on YouTube Music, we'll see if this pans out better. Then there are other podcast bets. That's all for today's episode of Podcast Industry News. This is a brand new show and we appreciate you subscribing or following in your favorite app, including at least for now, Google Podcasts.
We also appreciate reviews in Apple podcasts and Spotify and on YouTube. I'm Justin Jackson. I've been your host. You can visit us on the web at podcastindustry.org.