YouTube Music teases more improvements to the podcast experience

YouTube Music podcasts announcement on a Motorola Edge+ (2023).

What you need to know

• YouTube Music is improving its podcast features to attract more listeners to its platform.
• People now have control over sorting options, recommendations and an updated search function.
• YouTube Music team promises more improvements in the near future.

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YouTube Music is picking up pace on its podcast content following the recent shutdown of Google Podcasts in an effort to make YouTube Music a better place for podcast enthusiasts. As this migration continues, the Youtube Podcast team said in a Reddit post that they've been "doing a lot" following consumer feedback to improve their experience on the app and that we should see more improvements.

The team points out three recent improvements made to the podcast user experience. Listeners can now sort a podcast's episode from newest to oldest, oldest to newest, most popular, or default (the order set by the creator).

Secondly, listeners outside of the United States who have podcasts in the YouTube Music Library will be able to see podcasts on their Home screen, including a new "Recommended shows" shelf. And finally, the team has also made changes to search results, making it easier to find YouTube podcasts. 

(Image credit: Nandika Iyer Ravi / Android Central)

Podcasts in YouTube Music officially launched in April 2023, when Google first started letting users in the U.S. listen to podcasts on YouTube Music. It has received several updates throughout the year and expanded to other countries outside the U.S.

A major update that YouTube Music received was when the platform started to accept audio-only RSS feeds — a quick and automated setup for creators to join the platform.

The YouTube team seemed optimistic about the future of YouTube Podcasts: "This is only the beginning, and the Podcasts team is working on a lot more improvements!"

Users have also been asked to join the conversation on Reddit about what improvements they'd like to see in the future. Hopefully, in light of Google Podcasts shutting down, we can see more feature parity for users who were used to the now-defunct service.

Podcast features from r/YoutubeMusic