Popular podcaster, Bill Simmons confirmed the move on Twitter before taking down his tweet earlier today. To that end, the company had then launched a portal for podcasters to start uploading their shows to Google Play Music before we open up the service to listeners.
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Note the new “Podcast” option in the navigation drawer.
The Podcasts section is divided into Featured and Your Subscriptions sections, and you can also use the search bar, though it now searches across all of Play Music rather than just the Podcasts section. According to some of the site’s readers, they managed to access the yet unreleased podcasts feature and report back on some of the new features podcasts will bring. That means that you may have to do some scrolling to find the results that you’re looking for.
A show’s page features its artwork front and center with a floating play button, quick actions to subscribe to or share the show, and an expandable description with a list of episodes. When you subscribe to a show, you can have the app automatically download the five most recent episodes, and you can also tell it to notify you when new episodes are available.
It’s a pretty standard set of features for a podcasting app, although one big caveat is that it seems you can search exclusively for podcasts – so you’ll get a ton of similarly-named tracks, artists and albums too. Sadly, we don’t know exactly when Google intends to officially launch the service. But given the fact that a handful of users have already seen it, it’s safe to assume the tech giant is preparing to release it soon.
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Given that this is a server triggered change, it’s a coin toss whether or not you can see it in your Play Music app. Either way, make sure you have version 6.3 or above – you can grab it manually from APK Mirror if the Play Store doesn’t want to update it for you.
