The integrated Google Search, Assistant, and the Cast features have completely streamlined the process of searching, subscribing, streaming, playing, and downloading your favorite podcasts. However, as of now, it seems to be going through a rather rough patch. Multiple Google Podcasts users have voiced their concerns over the Google Support Forum that many of their subscriptions have suddenly gone missing.
Joining the dots, and it came out that all the missing podcasts were having the “Explicit” tags. For the unaware, this means that users under the age of 18 years wouldn’t be able to get hold of these contents. However, the ones facing this issue are well over the age of 18 years. Moreover, the users who have downloaded these podcasts for offline listening are also facing issues. While trying to open those explicit Google podcasts, they are being greeted with the following error message: “Content Removed – we’ve restricted some content for people who aren’t over 18”. However, as mentioned before, all these users fall under the adult age category. So how could one rectify this issue? Well, there do exist a few workarounds that seem to have fixed the Google Podcasts subscriptions missing/Content Removed error. Without further ado, let’s check them out.
Fix Google Podcasts Subscriptions Missing/Content Removed Error
Since there’s no universal fix as such, you might have to try each of the below-mentioned workarounds and then check which one spells out success for you. So with that in mind, let’s get started.
FIX 1: Re-Verify your Age in Google Account
First and foremost, we recommend you to recheck your birthdate that is entered in the Google Account. For that, head over to the Google Account’s Birthday page and check out the day/date/year. If it’s all well and good, then it seems that Google needs to perform a recheck on their age-calculation algorithm! On a serious note though, it is advised that you renter these details and hit Save. This will refresh the stored birth date data on Google’s server. Once that is done, launch the Google Podcasts app and check if the subscriptions missing/Content Removed error has been fixed or not.
FIX 2: Perform Age Verification via Credit Card
If you are already using a Credit Card for various Google Services, then you could take the help of this credit card to additionally verify your date of birth via it. This method did manage to fix the issue for some users and has been marked as a Recommended Answer by Google Community Manager.
Once done, log out of the Podcast app and then sign back in. Now verify whether the Google Podcasts subscriptions missing/Content Removed error has been fixed or not.
FIX 3: Delete Podcast App Data
In some instances, if a lot of data gets accumulated over the due course of time, or if the stored data gets outdated or corrupted, then it could conflict with the proper functioning of the app. Therefore, in such cases, you should consider deleting the app’s data so that it starts off in a fresh working environment from scratch. However, it might end up deleting the saved podcast episode as well. So if that’s well and good, then follow along with the instructions:
So with this, we round off the guide on how you could fix the Google Podcasts subscriptions missing/Content Removed error. We have shared three different workarounds for the same. Do let us know in the comments section which method spelled out success for you.
UPDATE 1 [5TH OCTOBER, 2021]
The second method [Performing an age verification via Credit Card] seems to be the right approach towards rectifying the issue as quite a few users have come forward and said that this method did manage to rectify the problem. But why did this issue arose in the first place? It seems that there have been a few changes or additions in the Google age verification requirements, specifically for the users residing in the UK.
Those who don’t verify their age aren’t just facing issues with missing podcasts, but also have to temporarily bid adieu to other Google services as well. These included the likes of Google’s account’s Data and Privacy settings for Location and Ads as well as in the YouTube Accounts. While this explains most of our answers, however, Google should still have taken a better approach in explaining these changes to its userbase, rather than straightaway taking away its offering.
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