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YouTube Music is officially rolling out podcasts

YouTube Music is officially rolling out podcasts

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The update will let you listen to podcasts in the background for free.

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Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge

Podcasts have finally started to arrive for YouTube Music users in the US. The change will allow you to tune into podcasts on the YouTube Music app, where you can gain access to on-demand, offline streams that support background listening without a Premium subscription.

YouTube first announced that it was bringing podcasts to its music streaming service at The Verge’s Hot Pod Summit in February, and now it’s “gradually” rolling out to users. The YouTube Music app will now have a dedicated podcast tab where you can browse through shows that were once limited to the main YouTube app. You can also swap between the audio and video versions of a podcast while using YouTube Music.

Adding podcasts to YouTube Music should help the service better compete with Spotify, which just hit 500 million monthly active users earlier this week. YouTube reported having around 80 million Music and Premium subscribers last November, while Spotify, on the other hand, says it has around 210 million paying users.

For now, podcasts are only available to YouTube Music users in the US, but YouTube says it plans on bringing the feature to other countries in the future. The feature is available on the YouTube Music app across iOS, Android, and web.