You can now add your favorite podcasts to YouTube Music via RSS feeds

Just as I predicted, Google decided to shutter its podcasting service in favor of its new favorite child, YouTube Music. At the time this was announced, many who relied solely on the RSS import feature of Podcasts for the listening experiences that weren’t on Google’s platform were pretty perturbed that this wasn’t possible on YTM. The tech giant is known for its lack of creating feature parity in a product or service before axing it and forcing users over to something else.

Now, at long last, it’s offering the ability to add podcasts via RSS feed like it should have from the onset (Thanks, Podnews). This feature, which is just beginning to roll out to users, is a game-changer for both podcast listeners and creators!

Now that you’re getting your hands on this (please be patient as it seems to be a staged rollout), just tap the ‘Add podcasts’ button under your Library tab to paste in your RSS feed URL. Once you do, you’ll have podcasts that simply aren’t available on YouTube Music either because that creator has yet to upload their content to YouTube Studio and mark it as a ‘Podcast’ playlist, or because Google didn’t port it over yet.

The best part about this is that everything you manually add will sit right alongside your existing podcast content, and won’t be separated like Google did with your Google Play Music imports. This means it feels native to the app, even though said content was not bestowed upon you by the Google gods. However, it will have a distinguishable RSS icon next to it, which is enough for me.

As we bid farewell to Google Podcasts in 2024, YouTube Music ensures you won’t have to part with your beloved shows, even if it should have thought things through more before forcing you to take the leap. Let me know in the comments if you’re unable to get any specific content loaded into the new Podcast interface for YouTube Music, or if you’re already saying adiós to the old app experience!