YouTube marked its 20th anniversary Wednesday with the release of a raft of statistics and a few bits of news, including some notable changes coming to its pay-TV service YouTube TV.
The Google-owned video giant said “multiview,” the feature enabling viewers to see multiple channels in a single frame, will expand beyond sports programming later this year. Also on the way is a major redesign of the TV interface this summer. “Easier navigation, playback, quality tweaks, plus streamlined access to comments, channel info, and subscribing are heading to your screens,” Senior Product Manager Viraj Mahesh wrote in a blog post.
No specifics were provided about the multiview expansion, but Mahesh wrote that it would encompass “a small group of popular channels.” First introduced in 2023, the feature immediately caught on with sports fans, who have used it to track multiple NFL games or the NCAA basketball tournaments or spring’s annual crossover of the NBA and NHL playoffs. It also has been deployed by YouTube in its live coverage of Coachella, which wrapped last Sunday.
Aided by multiview, unlimited DVR and other features, YouTube TV has become one of the top pay-TV operators in the U.S. just eight years after its launch. Google said in 2024 the service had surpassed 8 million subscribers, but many Wall Street and industry analysts believe it is past 10 million and closing in on the No. 1 spot in the sector.
Along with the new TV features, the company released some staggering numbers about its growth. In the 20 years since “Me at the Zoo” became the first video put on YouTube, more than 20 trillion (with a “t”) videos have now been uploaded to the platform. The average has risen to more than 20 million videos a day.
Music videos continue to be a foundational element, with 300 of them having cracked the 1 billion views mark. The fastest to get there was “Hello” by Adele, which reached the milestone in 88 days.
Also on the music front, new features are on the way for YouTube Music. A new offering called Ask Music will let YouTube Premium subscribers create their own personalized radio station. Currently available in iOS and Android for YouTube Premium and YouTube Music users in English in select countries, the feature will expand to more languages and countries soon, the company said.
YouTube Premium is also now enabling subscribers to play videos in 4x speed, twice the previous maximum.
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