Google brings podcasts to Google Play Music

Google today announced that it is (finally) bringing podcasts to its Google Play Music service in the U.S. and Canada. With this, it follows in the footsteps of services like Spotify, which recently launched podcast support out of beta, and — of course — iTunes, which was one of the first music players to support podcasts back in 2005.

Last October, Google launched a portal for podcasters in the U.S. who wanted to bring their shows to Google Play Music. At the time, though, it didn’t announce when the ability to play podcasts in the app would go live for listeners. By February, a few Google Play Music users started seeing a podcast section in their apps (likely because Google was testing this feature), so today’s launch doesn’t come as a major surprise.