Google Play Music Podcasts are live for some users

Some of the site’s readers got in touch with the publication to share that somehow, they’d been able to access the – as yet unreleased – podcasts feature. Plus, Google has not yet made a formal announcement about the launch, which it is likely to do when podcast support is live for the majority of users, or soon being switched on. When you choose a specific podcast, you are given the option of listening to individual episodes and subscribe to channels. Note the new “Podcast” option in the navigation drawer.

If you’re concerned about missing your shows’ new episodes, the feature allows you to auto-download the last five episodes of any podcast; you can also opt in to receive a notification for new episodes on the podcasts you’ve subscribed to. You can simply jump forward or back 30 seconds, but there is no ability to change playback speed, optimize volume or eliminate silences.

It’s somewhat incredible that it has taken this long for Google to support the popular entertainment genre in its Music service, a rival to Apple’s iTunes.

This story, “Google Play Music starts rolling out podcasts to the Android app” was originally published by Greenbot.

Android Police was the first to report the news, offering us a pretty good idea of how the podcasts’ user interface will look like.

Users can also search or browse to find other titles.

If that wasn’t convincing enough, the aforementioned tweet has since been deleted, suggesting that Simmons had jumped the gun on a sensitive piece of information.

As highlighted by Droid-life, popular U.S. podcaster Bill Simmons recently tweeted that his own show would be “available on Google Play when GP launches its podcast platform later this month”.