YouTube Music wants to be the ‘ultimate destination for podcasters and fans’

YouTube today released an interview with Chief Product Officer Johanna Voolich about the “Future of Podcasts” on the platform and in YouTube Music.

For starters, YouTube says it “deeply care[s] about fostering a vibrant podcast scene that caters to everyone and anyone.” That is straightforward enough to believe with video podcasts organically growing on YouTube and the visual aspect serving as almost an exclusive differentiator.

This interview is interesting for sharing how YouTube sees podcasts and how it’s leaning into the video aspect, which it considers an “eyes optional experience” that is “great to hear and listen to but also can be great to watch.”

“…one thing that we’ve heard about podcasts on YouTube is people actually like a visual element”

The other big “secret sauce” is using the existing recommendations system to “help people discover something new or go deeper on what they love, while helping podcasters reach new audiences only found on YouTube.” One thing YouTube is encouraging is having podcasters upload their full back catalog.

To that end, YouTube has “revamped [its] recommendation and discovery algorithms to help creators and listeners discover new content effortlessly” through Watch Next, the YouTube homepage, and search.

Our Discovery systems and our Watch Next can highlight topics, can highlight creators, [and] can highlight key themes that were already in one podcast and recommend them in another one.

Meanwhile, the goal is to make YouTube Music the “ultimate destination for podcasters and fans alike.” Specifically, it sees YTM as providing the “traditional” experience that Google Podcasts users are familiar with.  

”We want YouTube music to be that one-stop shop for all of your listening.”

YTM is an “addition designed to elevate the podcast consumption experience” by offering “users the flexibility to watch and listen to their preferred podcasts without requiring a paid membership.” This is achieved through existing features that were built for music like “background play, downloads, and the unique ability to switch between audio and video formats.”

Additional YTM updates that YouTube points to include:

• “support for third-party RSS podcasts”: November 2023
• “updates to the Android Auto experience for easy in-car listening”
• “enhanced download options”: Auto-downloads in March 2023
• “customizable playlist sorting”: More options coming

Another thing we learned today is how YouTube doesn’t currently have an RSS out — where you upload your show/episodes to YouTube and Google would generate an RSS feed for other podcast clients — feature on its roadmap. 

It would have been nice if today’s update provided a specific roadmap on what’s coming to YouTube Music especially ahead of the international Google Podcasts deprecation in June. YTM continues to lack basic functionality like new episode notifications and mark as played that should really have been added before Google Podcasts went away for any users.