Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge YouTube has reached a deal with the music licensing organization SESAC that will bring back songs that were removed over the weekend. Many hit songs from artists such as Adele, Nirvana, and others disappeared, which YouTube blamed on the lack of an agreement to renew its existing deal.In an email to The Verge, SESAC confirmed the new deal but noted that YouTube unilaterally removed" the songs before their old agreement expired as of October 1st.Scott Jungmichel, SESAC performing rights president and COO:

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge You may soon be able to keep listening to your TV shows on YouTube TV even if you can't watch them. Google appears to be finally bringing background playback to its YouTube TV streaming service. The company confirmed to The Verge that it's experimenting" with enabling YouTube TV playback after a phone is locked.As reported by 9to5Google, the feature was spotted a couple of weeks ago by Reddit users who found they could continue listening to YouTube TV audio even after sending the video app to the background on their mobile devices.Background playback lets you keep listening to your content when your phone's screen is off or locked. So, you can still listen to the audio even if you can't watch the action. This could be helpful in... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge YouTube Shorts, the company's answer to TikTok, is getting updates including longer video lengths, the company announced today.Beginning on October 15th, creators will be able to upload YouTube Shorts that are up to three minutes in length - a feature YouTube says was highly requested by users. TikTok currently allows videos as long as 10 minutes and has steadily increased the limit over the years.YouTube also announced a template feature that lets creators reuse the format of other Shorts. YouTube says creators will be able to match their clips to trending sounds pulled from other videos, which is similar to a TikTok feature where users can pick from preset video styles and then tweak their own clips based on their preferences. Both... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge YouTube is getting a bunch of small but handy new features, like the ability to more finely tune your playback speed, new tools to collaborate on playlists, a sleep timer, and more.For me, a person who has written multiple times about video playback speeds, YouTube's new speed controls are definitely the highlight. With the updated controls, you can select playback speeds in .05 increments instead of .25 increments, giving you a lot more options for exactly how fast or slow you want to watch a video. Playback speed is still capped at 2x - maybe someday it'll get bumped up higher than that.The upgrades to playlists sound useful, too. You'll be able to build collaborative playlists by sharing a link (or, in a feature coming soon" to... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Last year, YouTube axed Premium Lite, its cheaper version of YouTube Premium, but the company has been testing a new version of the subscription in Australia, Germany, and Thailand, YouTube confirmed to Android Authority.The company confirmed the tests to The Verge as well, with spokesperson Jessica Gibby saying that it has been testing a different version" of the subscription with some users in Australia, Germany and Thailand for several months (with the most recent one beginning in Australia at the start of this year)." Gibby adds that we don't have anything else to share in terms of a broader rollout at this time."According to a screenshot shared by singer-songwriter Jonah Manzano on Threads, the Premium Lite subscription in... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge YouTube is taking a page out of the TikTok playbook by adding jewels" you buy to exchange for gifts for your favorite creators during livestreams. The feature, announced in September's Made on YouTube event, is rolling out in the US over the next few weeks for eligible creators in the YouTube Partner Program.The feature is reminiscent of TikTok's livestream gifting, which essentially works the same way, except you buy coins." On YouTube, gifts you send to live streamers appear onscreen and add to their earnings called rubies," valued at one cent each. YouTube says there's no fixed revenue share since the cost of jewels can change based on promotions, so the amount of rubies earned can vary. For the next three months, YouTube will... Continue reading...