It’s the message we’ve been waiting to hear… forever. Google has made an official announcement that the company will add podcasts to its Google Play service. I guess the years of incessant nagging on behalf of the podcasting community, or the undeniable push of the so-called “podcast resurgence” were finally too much for the search engine giant to continue to ignore our happy medium.
Full implementation of podcasting in Google Play is still a few months away. Following the path of another noteworthy service that recently got into podcasting, Google Play is already working with a handful of content providers:
- 5by5
- Dan Carlin
- Dave Ramsey
- Earwolf
- Feral Audio
- Gimlet Media
- HBO
- Head Gum
- HowStuffWorks
- Loud Speakers Network
- Nerdist/Legendary
- Public Radio International
- Radiotopia/PRX
- Sideshow Network
- Slate/Panoply
- StarTalk Radio
- This Week in Tech
- Tim Ferriss But unlike that other service, Google is accepting submissions from any and all podcasters thru its Podcast Portal. In order to submit a show, you’ll need a working RSS 2.0 feed that also contains valid iTunes tags. (The submission form suggests either OR tags for a few specific fields. If your podcast feed was accepted and is working with iTunes now, you should be fine.)
I submitted my podcast feed earlier today and it was accepted without issue. Now the feed awaits approval by the Google gods. Some podcasters have reported errors while submitting feeds. There’s no official support information yet for the submission process so it’s hard to say what’s causing those errors. Regardless, many users have found that waiting a few minutes and trying again has resulted in a successful submission.