City Soundtracks is an original podcast by Google Play Music and is the first original content that Google has created for the platform. It was created with the intention of helping listeners learn more about their favorite artists by allowing them to receive a guided audio tour of sorts through the city that shaped each artist. Like any podcast City Soundtracks will have a continuation of episodes with each episode focusing on a particular band or solo music artist, and there are already three episodes to listen to, all of which were just posted this morning, and there will of course be more on the way.
The first episode in the list centers around Spoon from Austin, Texas, which seems fitting considering that Austin will be hosting SXSW this week, while the second and third episodes on the list center around Big Freedia from New Orleans, Louisiana, and Khelani from Oakland, California. While the podcast episodes themselves will go into much more detail about each particular artist or band, you can click on (or tap if you’re viewing the podcast in the Play Music app on your mobile device) the small information button to get a snippet of detail about the episode with a very brief description of the band. There doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to the length of each episode but the three that are currently available range from a little over 11 minutes to just over 15 minutes.
City Soundtracks can simply be streamed if you’re generally always around an internet connection, but you can also download the episodes if you know you’ll be losing connectivity at some point during your day and want to be prepared with something to listen to. While most of the podcast will just be conversation and talking, there will also be some music laced in between everything else, and some episodes will have an “Explicit” label as they’ll have content that might not be appropriate for all ages. Google hasn’t mentioned how often they’ll put out new episodes, so if you like what you hear and are wanting more of it, you’ll want to hit the subscribe button on the podcast so you can be notified when new episodes pop up.