In the early days of podcasting, iTunes and Apple was synonymous with the medium. Every show you listed too said “subscribe on iTunes.” While iTunes is still big for podcasting, other services are now taking away from the once dominant iTunes. They include Pocket Casts, Stitcher and even Spotify.
I personally think the change is more that people want to stream their media rather than download it. The original iTunes model is download and synch. People are going mobile and the podcasting on Apple products can now be downloaded on the go. Also, I’m surprised Google hasn’t done this sooner with Google Play. The details are still coming but it seems like it will be very similar to iTunes Podcasting. You can submit podcasts but the section in the play store isn’t open as of this writing.
Why this matters – Its important to get your content out in as many ways as you can. Most podcasting services I mentioned well allow you to list your show for free. The one exception is Pocket Casts, it will find the podcast. I had one I was working on and it was still relatively new and it was able to be found in their list. I was impressed. Also, the Play Store listing is completely free!
How Do you submit your podcast? – You have to first have a Google account. Then go to g.co/podcastportal. Once there you can submit a podcast. It’s very simple. You paste in your rss feed. It will then send a verification code to your email on file. Lastly you will need to enter the code in the portal. After that it will be reviewed and then approved or rejected.
I submitted a podcast last night and it was very quick and easy. The thing that took the longest was actually finding the right RSS feed for the podcast. You should find it in your settings. I recently moved my podcasts to Blubrry plug in, since PodPress had not been updated in years. It was in a different place that I expected.
According to Google Android Blog post they say there are 1 Billion users in the Google Play store each month. This has some good potential to grow your audience. You really have nothing to loose by joining the Google Play podcasts. Once you update your blog it will automatically carry over to the Play Store.
No official date when podcasting will be available to the public. I will let you know when it’s released.