Google announced at the HotPod Summit in Brooklyn today that podcasts are coming soon to YouTube Music (via 9to5Google). The company will start rolling out podcasts to YouTube Music users in the US, with other markets to follow later.

“We will soon start to bring both audio and video-first podcasts to YouTube Music for users in the US, making podcasts more discoverable and accessible, with more regions to come. This will help make the podcasts that users already love on YouTube, available in all the places they want to listen,” Google said in an email today.

In the announcement, Google also said that it’s rolling out new podcast creation tools in YouTube Studio. Content creators will be able to easily turn their videos into podcasts, create podcast playlists, and opt-in to have their podcasts available in the YouTube Music app.

YouTube is already a popular destination for podcasts, though it’s not really a great one. On mobile, the main YouTube app requires a Premium subscription to listen to videos in the background. However, background listening for podcasts will be available for free on the YouTube Music mobile app.

Just like YouTube Music already lets users switch between song and video when listening to a track with a video clip, YouTube Music will apparently let podcast listeners switch between the audio and video version of a podcast (if available) on the fly. However, YouTube Music users listening to podcasts will have to deal with audio ads.

YouTube is focused on unifying the audio and video experience for the audience.

Start watching a podcast at home, listen during your commute (maybe finish watching at work).

— Alban 🛫 NYC for Hot Pod Summit (@AlbanBrooke) February 23, 2023

Google also said that at the HotPod Summit today that it’s not planning to immediately shut down its existing Google Podcasts app on the web and mobile. This app currently offers more flexibility to podcast listeners as it support adding any podcast with an RSS feed, similar to Apple’s Podcasts app on iOS and macOS.