YouTube’s New Podcasts Platform is Now Live for Some U.S. Users

YouTube’s taking its next steps into podcast hosting, with some users now able to access a dedicated podcast page in the app, which will eventually enable podcasters to feed their shows straight into YouTube, adding another promotion surface for their content.

As reported by 9to5Google, YouTube’s podcast page is now available to a small subset of people, providing a full overview of podcast content in the app

via YouTube

You can see in this example above, most of the listed podcasts link to YouTube accounts and videos of the same, with audio versions available for each, providing another way to better integrate your YouTube and podcast content approach.

As per 9to5Google:

Available on desktop web and mobile, it’s very rudimentary at this point. There are carousels, which can be expanded via ‘Show all’, for ‘Popular episodes’, ‘Popular podcast playlists’, ‘Recommended’, and ‘Popular podcast creators’. The rest of this page links to various categories: Comedy, True Crime, Sports, Music, and TV & Film.

YouTube has confirmed the test, explaining that:

The podcast destination page on YouTube helps users explore new and popular podcast episodes, shows and Creators, as well as recommend podcast content. It’s currently available in the US only.

YouTube

 The Podcast platform is still very new and limited, but it’s the next goal in YouTube’s podcast plans is to eventually provide another consideration for building your YouTube and podcast audience.

YouTube’s move into podcasts was revealed earlier this year, via a leaked pitch deck by @podnews and provided a basic overview of the platform’s plans to more directly incorporate podcasts into the YouTube experience.

YouTube Podcast Platform

Another logical feature in the works for podcasters will eventually be a setting to connect and streamline audio shows in via RSS, with YouTube offering audio ads, analytics, and more to help them showcase their audio offerings.

In some ways, it seems odd that the leading video platform is moving into audio as well, but with podcast listenership on the rise, and audio options gaining popularity, there’s clear value in YouTube incorporating podcasts as another potential growth element and marketplace to monetize.

As highlighted in the above image, lots of popular YouTubers now have their own podcasts anyway, which they share to the platform via in-studio video clips, which essentially means that YouTube already hosts a lot of audio-focused content either way. More or less, YouTube has also made music a bigger focus, with audio-only listening options providing other reasons to consume YouTube content.

Now remember in late 2020, YouTube reported that music streaming had reached an all-time high, while YouTube Music itself now has more than 77 million paying subscribers. So while visual elements remain central to the platform’s broader offering, there’s clearly significant interest in audio-only content as well, while YouTube also added audio only ads back in 2020 as part of its broader push to maximize YouTube Music.

Overall, the integration of podcasts makes a lot of sense, in providing more ways for creators to solidify bonds with their audience.

YouTube hasn’t provided any further details at this stage, but an official announcement is expected sometime soon.

in the meantime, add all your podcasts by embed on your KinerkTube Artist and/or Business page(s) from dozens of podcast and streaming sites. Doing so we’ll make it playable and shareable with analytics as another way to leverage your podcast monetization and audiences. KinerkTube may be adding YouTube Podcast as a compatibility under page’s and Events Podcast tab as it’s already available for video tabs. In this case a unique podcast URL will allow only those podcast YouTube videos to be added and organized on KinerkTube.com

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