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...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The YouTube Kids mobile app is getting a redesign that both makes it look and behave more like the standard YouTube app and lets kids browse through videos in portrait mode for the first time. It's rolling out over the next few weeks on iOS and Android, while the web and smart TV experiences stay the same.YouTube Kids launched nearly a decade ago, and its look hasn't changed much since its last major redesign in 2017. As the company said last year, this is a hefty visual and functional refresh that looks less toy-like, with elements from the recent design changes in the main YouTube app. Screenshot: Google The YouTube Kids update looks a bit more like the main YouTube app. At the top, you'll notice a newly designed carousel for familiar content filters. They're clearly labeled by topic, whether you're looking for gaming, shows, music, or the educationally inclined Explore" tab. Those buttons will occupy less horizontal space. Screenshot: The Verge Here's how the YouTube Kids app looks now, before the new update rolls out. Some of the other shortcuts that used to live at the top - such as Home, Search, and Profile - will be moved to a new navigation bar at the bottom. A new Your Stuff" page will also live in that bar and serve as a dedicated portal to find content that you've downloaded, shared, or previously watched. Parental controls and other settings will remain in dedicated views, with shortcuts for those always accessible in the upper right corner, next to the Cast button.

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge I maintain that YouTube TV is the very best of the streaming TV services, but good grief is it getting expensive. Today YouTube announced the service's latest price hike, which brings the monthly subscription to $82.99. The change is effective immediately for new customers and will be reflected starting January 13th for most existing customers." As usual, the company attributes this increase to the rising cost of content and the investments we make in the quality of our service."$82.99 is the same price as Disney's Hulu + Live TV bundle.YouTube TV last raised its subscription cost to $72.99 in March 2023. Before that, it was $64.99. The days when the service ran only $50 now feel like a lifetime ago. Some of you who got in early might even remember it costing a mere $35 per month.But since then, YouTube has routinely found itself in carriage disputes with Disney, NBCUniversal, and other content owners, and those renegotiated agreements have led YouTube TV's price to climb higher and higher. The YouTube TV of today is much different than it used to be; there are more channels, yes, but the service has also shed a number of regional sports networks.The company is quick to note that none of the service's core benefits are changing. The base subscription still includes over 100 channels, cloud DVR with unlimited storage, up to six user accounts per household, and the flexibility of three concurrent streams. But YouTube TV still charges extra for 4K streaming, which seems harder to rationalize after this $10 price bump.Customers are predictably none too pleased about the news and are weighing whether a service that now costs more than double its original price is still worth it.

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge YouTube is rolling out a way for creators to let third-party companies use their videos to train AI models. To be clear, the default setting for this is off, meaning that if you don't want to let third-party companies scrape your videos for AI training, you don't have to do anything. But if, for some reason, you do want to allow that - Google says that some creators and rights holders" may want to - it's going to be an option.We see this as an important first step in supporting creators and helping them realize new value for their YouTube content in the AI era," a TeamYouTube staffer named Rob says in a support post. As we gather feedback, we'll continue to explore features that facilitate new forms of collaboration between creators and third-party companies, including options for authorized methods to access content."YouTube will be rolling out the setting in YouTube Studio over the next few days," and unauthorized scraping remains prohibited," Rob writes.Another support page says that you'll be able to pick and choose from a list of third-party companies that can train on your videos or you can simply allow all third-party companies to train on them. The initial list of companies includes the following, according to TechCrunch: