Rule of Google: if it works, kill it.
I know, I know, using Google apps isn’t the best, but this was a perfectly good Podcast app with all the features you might want.
Apparently they’re moving everything over to YouTube Music, where a lot of the features of Google Podcasts aren’t implemented yet.
I’ve moved over to an app from F-Droid.
To be fair, I don’t see the point of this app existing when YouTube Music (and, naturally—by extention—YTM ReVanced) already has a dedicated podcast section. No need for redundant apps.
The old Podcast app was simple, it did one thing, and it did it well. YouTube Music seems to be trying to do a dozen different things, and it does a shit job of all of them.
I’m using it and I’m quite happy with it, I even think it’s better than Spotify especially the music recommendations
I have the same impression after comparing it recently to Spotify. On Spotify there is no dislike button so I can’t say, please don’t play this song anymore, I can only ban the entire artist which is definitely not what I want and also not as easy to do. Then when it comes to generated playlist out of one song, the Spotify songs seem irrelevant to the song they start from, while the yt songs are at the very least in the same genre.
And the interface works fine, I’m never sure what people talk about when they say it’s not good.
The recommendations are the main reason why I ditched Spotify for YouTube Music ReVanced. Spotify seems to believe that my tastes in music are more indie than they are, just because not everything I listen to has hit a Billboard chart at one point. YTM tends to play the same songs over and over again, but at least they’re songs I recognize.
Also why would I pay $10/mo for Spotify Premium when I could use YTM ReVanced for free and just block the ads? Which is the second reason why I switched.
I’m with you on this one. it’s really easy to go “lol another Google app dead,” but this one case I’m ok with. YouTube has become the place for video podcasts. it wasn’t something YouTube pushed for, it just naturally happened as the site was well built for it. I used to have to use YouTube for video podcasts and pocket casts for audio. now I can just use YouTube music for both, and I find the UI much better at separating music and podcasts then Spotify.
it’s annoying as hell that they don’t have basic features in YouTube music yet tho, like mark as played or notifications for new episodes, which is crazy. you can’t even search the RSS directory for audio podcasts, you have to manually put in the feed url. it’s the Google Play music shutdown all over again. but I still believe the idea of moving audio podcasts to YouTube music makes sense.