


Last fall, Google announced that at some point in 2024, it’d be shuttering its Podcasts platform, and just one day ago, Google Podcasts was laid to rest in the Google Graveyard. It’s just the next in a long line of platforms and projects that Google has killed in recent years, but will surely have former users wondering what happens now.
We get it; we’d be stressed too if our go-to podcast platform disappeared and we weren’t able to get our weekly fix of podcasts like “Up in the Blue Seats” and “Virtual Reali-Tea.”
Luckily, there are a lot of podcast apps out there that you can try out to fill the Google Podcasts void. Our favorite of the bunch, Amazon Music, is one that you may not even know you have access to.
Amazon Music is a music streaming platform built into Amazon, similar to Spotify. It has three plans, designed so anyone can use the platform.
As the name implies, Amazon Music Free is a free-for-everyone music platform that doesn’t even require a credit card to get started. As far as music goes, the only things available to stream for free are curated playlists — you won’t be able to pick just any song and listen to it.
However, Amazon Music’s entire podcast library is available on Amazon Music Free — with a catch. Most podcasts available are ad-supported, so you’ll have to sit through unskippable ads during each episode.
If you don’t want ads during everything you listen to, there is a free way to do that (even if it’s only for a few weeks)…
The second tier of Amazon Music is Prime which, as the name implies, is connected to an Amazon Prime Membership. It’s automatically included with all Prime memberships, but some Prime members might not even realize they have access to this perk.
Amazon Music Prime makes it a little easier to listen to music — all of the service’s music is streaming, ad-free, but similar to Spotify’s free plan, you can only listen to things on shuffle with limited skips.
The podcast plan on Amazon Music Prime eliminates the ad breaks from episodes entirely, so you can enjoy ad-free listening 100% of the time.
If you’re not an Amazon Prime subscriber already, you can enjoy a one-month free trial before $14.99/month payments kick in. If you’re a student, you can take advantage of a six-month free trial before discounts kick in with Prime Student.
If you’re just as interested in the music streaming portion of Amazon Music as you are in the podcasts, Amazon Music Unlimited is for you. It introduces unlimited skips and the ability to play whatever you want to the service, alongside the same ad-free podcasts.
It’s an additional subscription price, but you don’t need an Amazon Prime subscription first to use it. It costs $10.99/month, but Prime Members do get a slight discount (it’s $9.99/month instead).
While there’s normally a one-month free trial for Amazon Music Unlimited, right now you can take advantage of a limited-time free trial offer that runs for three months instead.
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