Today is the day a lot of podcasters have been waiting for. Google officially launched a brand new app, Google Podcasts.

If you have an Android device, you can download the new app here.

If you’re a podcaster and you want to make sure your show is optimized for Google Podcasts, check out Google’s best practices documentation here. It includes everything you need to know, including how to get a permalink to your show and the official Google Podcasts page for podcast website. Google hopes to double worldwide podcast audiences with their new strategy, so being set up properly early would be smart for pretty much everyone with a show.

For background about why today is an important day in podcasting:

• Many view the day that Apple created their dedicated Apple Podcasts app in 2014 as a milestone in making podcasts more accessible and popular. The new Google Podcasts app that launched today is being seen as a similar “game-changing” moment for the industry.
• The average Android device currently listen to TEN times less podcasting than an iOS device. Part of this is likely because there is a highly fragmented ecosystem for podcasting apps on Android, with no default app existing. That may well change with the launch of today’s Google Podcasts app.
• There are more Android users worldwide than iOS users.
• Android users are represented more heavily internationally, so there is strong potential for more diverse audiences and shows with an increased Android user base.
• Google is also putting audio content in their Google Search results. People will start seeing more and more audio results that are strongly related to their search queries. This has huge potential to get people listening to podcasts for the first time, not because they are looking for a podcast, but because a podcast is the best answer to the question they have asked.
• If even a fraction of Android listeners start listening to podcasts for the first time, it will generate huge growth in worldwide audiences.

If you’d like to know more about what Google is doing and why, check out our five-part series about the new Google Podcast strategy here.

Once you’ve downloaded and started using the app, let us know — what do you think?

If you’re a podcaster, what are your thoughts about the impact of Google Podcasts on your show and the industry?

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