Podcasts coming to Google Play

Mark Bergen at Recode:

It’s Google’s turn now. The Alphabet company is getting ready to open a dedicated home for podcasts on its Google Play hub. Today the company is letting podcast creators upload shows to Google Play Music, its streaming service; it says listeners will be able to listen to those shows “in the coming months.” It will be, remarkably, the first native app for podcast listening on Android in the content market where Apple carries disproportionate weight.

The announcement comes over 10 years after Apple added the medium to iTunes. John Gruber has already pointed out pointed out Marco Arment’s post from two weeks ago, in which he declared “Big money is coming.”

I can only guess that both Arment and Gruber were referring to this all along. Also, Arment retweeted this:

Hypothetically, I’m not sure the implementation of podcasts to Google Play would have made a significant impact on his audience if he kept his original pricing model. It is, after all, bolstered by his previous work and his high-profile podcast and blog.

I can’t argue with the potential that Google’s announcement has on, say, a newer developer trying to make a podcast app. Their efforts are already bolstered by heavy hitters in the podcasting world like 5by5, Nerdist and over a dozen more. On the other hand, Google is still getting into the game 10 years behind Apple.

Like the above tweet, the announcement can easily be used as a way to confirm Arment’s place in the big argument here, but I think it goes beyond podcast apps, and thus is still an argument worth having.