As we have done since 2010, YouTube will live stream the President’s State of the Union address on Tuesday, February 5 at 9 p.m. ET, as well as the response. This year, you can tune in to live streams in both English and Spanish. Here are the channels where you can follow the coverage:
YouTube Music just got a little bit louder! Beginning today, YouTube Music is now available to play on all Sonos speakers. Through the Sonos app, fans around the world with a YouTube Music Premium or YouTube Premium subscription can now easily play official songs, albums, thousands of playlists, and artist radio—on top of YouTube’s tremendous catalog of remixes, live performances, covers that you can’t find anywhere else.
Check out some of the YouTube Music features available on Sonos:
Recommended
Loaded with listening suggestions based on your favorites, Recommended has playlists for your every mood, plus your favorites and last played, ready to go. From Mellow Moods to Energy Boosters to Throwback Jams, quickly find what’s right for you in the moment.
New Releases
Find a collection of the freshest music specifically tailored to your tastes. Listen to newly released songs and albums. This week, my list featured Maggie Rogers, YouTube Music's latest Artist on the Rise.
Top YouTube Charts
YouTube Charts are the best way to see what’s hot in music right now. The Top 100 Songs chart catalogs the most popular songs globally, and you’ll also find a local version that’s tailored to what’s trending in your country.
Your Mixtape
This personalized playlist features a mix of your favorites and new songs we think you’ll love. It’s constantly updating, so you can always count on Your Mixtape to deliver a new combination right at your fingertips within the Sonos app.
Library
Easily find your saved playlists, albums, and songs in your Library.
Available in all countries where YouTube Music and YouTube Premium are available, fans with a subscription can now easily play YouTube Music through a Sonos app. Already have Sonos and ready to try YouTube Music? Start your free trial at youtube.com/musicpremium, and learn more about setting up your account with Sonos here.
When recommendations are at their best, they help users find a new song to fall in love with, discover their next favorite creator, or learn that great paella recipe. That's why we update our recommendations system all the time—we want to make sure we’re suggesting videos that people actually want to watch.
You might remember that a few years ago, viewers were getting frustrated with clickbaity videos with misleading titles and descriptions (“You won’t believe what happens next!”). We responded by updating our system to focus on viewer satisfaction instead of views, including measuring likes, dislikes, surveys, and time well spent, all while recommending clickbait videos less often. More recently, people told us they were getting too many similar recommendations, like seeing endless cookie videos after watching just one recipe for snickerdoodles. We now pull in recommendations from a wider set of topics—on any given day, more than 200 million videos are recommended on the homepage alone. In fact, in the last year alone, we’ve made hundreds of changes to improve the quality of recommendations for users on YouTube.
We’ll continue that work this year, including taking a closer look at how we can reduce the spread of content that comes close to—but doesn’t quite cross the line of—violating our Community Guidelines. To that end, we’ll begin reducing recommendations of borderline content and content that could misinform users in harmful ways—such as videos promoting a phony miracle cure for a serious illness, claiming the earth is flat, or making blatantly false claims about historic events like 9/11.
While this shift will apply to less than one percent of the content on YouTube, we believe that limiting the recommendation of these types of videos will mean a better experience for the YouTube community. To be clear, this will only affect recommendations of what videos to watch, not whether a video is available on YouTube. As always, people can still access all videos that comply with our Community Guidelines and, when relevant, these videos may appear in recommendations for channel subscribers and in search results. We think this change strikes a balance between maintaining a platform for free speech and living up to our responsibility to users.
This change relies on a combination of machine learning and real people. We work with human evaluators and experts from all over the United States to help train the machine learning systems that generate recommendations. These evaluators are trained using public guidelines and provide critical input on the quality of a video.
This will be a gradual change and initially will only affect recommendations of a very small set of videos in the United States. Over time, as our systems become more accurate, we'll roll this change out to more countries. It's just another step in an ongoing process, but it reflects our commitment and sense of responsibility to improve the recommendations experience on YouTube.
Nearly two years ago, we launched YouTube TV, a new and reimagined way to enjoy cable-free live TV on your terms. Since then, we've been working to make sure that people in the top 100 markets in the United States can watch their favorite sports, news, and shows—without the hassles that come with traditional cable TV. Today, we’re thrilled to announce that we’re bringing this experience to the rest of the country. YouTube TV is going nationwide!
Just in time for the Big Game, you can now bring together some tasty game day snacks with the full experience of YouTube TV. That’s exciting news for living rooms, cord-cutters, and cord-nevers in neighborhoods far and wide, from Bozeman to Gainesville, Anchorage to Yuma, and Erie to Topeka.
We’re rolling out YouTube TV to 95 markets starting today, covering over 98 percent of households in the United States. The remainder will follow shortly thereafter. You can see the latest list in our FAQs.
Since YouTube TV’s early days, it’s been important for us to create an experience that brings you the best of your favorite TV content. As part of that effort, we've offered local feeds from broadcasters, allowing you to catch up with the content that matters to you. With this national expansion, we're providing complete local affiliate coverage by providing local feeds from the four largest broadcasters in over 90 percent of the markets where YouTube TV is available. Here's what this means: more game-winners from your hometown favorite, more breaking news and stories you need to know, and overall, a more relevant TV experience.
Just as a quick reminder, YouTube TV offers cable-free live TV through a simple, best-in-class, and hassle-free experience. It includes:
Over 60 networks, such as ABC, CBS, FOX and NBC. Plus, popular cable networks like TNT, TBS, CNN, ESPN, FX and on-demand programming.
A cloud DVR with no storage space limits. This enables subscribers to record live TV and never run out of storage space. Also, you can record shows simultaneously without using data or space on your device.
The ability to watch YouTube TV on any screen – mobile devices, tablets, computers and TVs.
Six accounts per household. Every YouTube TV membership comes with six accounts, each with its own unique recommendations and a personal DVR with no storage space limits.
Half the cost of cable with zero commitments. A YouTube TV membership is only $40 a month and there are no commitments – you can cancel anytime.
So prep those buffalo wings, get ready for some memorable commercials, and kick back and enjoy the award-winning, cable-free live TV service people love. We’re excited and committed to continue making YouTube TV the live TV experience that's tailor-made for you. And to all our new neighbors and members—welcome to the family!
Posted by Ben Moores, Program Manager, YouTube TV, who will be rooting for L.A. next Sunday
Nearly two years ago, we launched YouTube TV, a new and reimagined way to enjoy cable-free live TV on your terms. Since then, we've been working to make sure that people in the top 100 markets in the United States can watch their favorite sports, news, and shows—without the hassles that come with traditional cable TV. Today, we’re thrilled to announce that we’re bringing this experience to the rest of the country. YouTube TV is going nationwide!
Just in time for the Big Game, you can now bring together some tasty game day snacks with the full experience of YouTube TV. That’s exciting news for living rooms, cord-cutters, and cord-nevers in neighborhoods far and wide, from Bozeman to Gainesville, Anchorage to Yuma, and Erie to Topeka.
We’re rolling out YouTube TV to 95 markets starting today, covering over 98 percent of households in the United States. The remainder will follow shortly thereafter. You can see the latest list in our FAQs.
Since YouTube TV’s early days, it’s been important for us to create an experience that brings you the best of your favorite TV content. As part of that effort, we've offered local feeds from broadcasters, allowing you to catch up with the content that matters to you. With this national expansion, we're providing complete local affiliate coverage by providing local feeds from the four largest broadcasters in over 90 percent of the markets where YouTube TV is available. Here's what this means: more game-winners from your hometown favorite, more breaking news and stories you need to know, and overall, a more relevant TV experience.
Just as a quick reminder, YouTube TV offers cable-free live TV through a simple, best-in-class, and hassle-free experience. It includes:
Over 60 networks, such as ABC, CBS, FOX and NBC. Plus, popular cable networks like TNT, TBS, CNN, ESPN, FX and on-demand programming.
A cloud DVR with no storage space limits. This enables subscribers to record live TV and never run out of storage space. Also, you can record shows simultaneously without using data or space on your device.
The ability to watch YouTube TV on any screen – mobile devices, tablets, computers and TVs.
Six accounts per household. Every YouTube TV membership comes with six accounts, each with its own unique recommendations and a personal DVR with no storage space limits.
Half the cost of cable with zero commitments. A YouTube TV membership is only $40 a month and there are no commitments – you can cancel anytime.
So prep those buffalo wings, get ready for some memorable commercials, and kick back and enjoy the award-winning, cable-free live TV service people love. We’re excited and committed to continue making YouTube TV the live TV experience that's tailor-made for you. And to all our new neighbors and members—welcome to the family!
Posted by Ben Moores, Program Manager, YouTube TV, who will be rooting for L.A. next Sunday
We introduced a new feature which allows YouTube creators to mix together spatial audio with stereo audio content, like music and/or narration, when they work on VR experiences. Viewers can already enjoy this feature on YouTube mobile apps as well as desktop web browsers.
Why we need spatial audio in VR
Sound has been part of making movies great almost from the start. Live music performance went along with silent movies even before 1927, when "The Jazz Singer" brought talkies to the big screen. In the early days, movie sound reproduction was very primitive and typically played over a single loudspeaker. Little consideration was given to the relationship between recorded sounds and the objects or actors on the screen. As technology progressed, people realized that making sound stereo — putting some sounds to the left, some to the right, and some moving from side-to-side across the screen — added another dimension to the experience. It's easier to get immersed in a movie when the sound and the picture fit together!
We like when the sound of an engine follows the car we are seeing. We get excited if our attention is suddenly drawn to another part of the screen by a door squeak, or a gunshot or an explosion. Although stereo sound creates an immersive experience, a typical loudspeaker set-up places the speakers on either side of the screen, which largely confines the movement of sound to within the screen itself. One of the limitations of this is that it doesn't match what we're used to in real life. We're used to hearing sounds from all around us, even when we don't see where they're coming from.
The need for more accurate real-life sound reproduction was recognized even before stereo was perfected for film in the production of "Fantasia" and its groundbreaking multi-speaker: Fantasound system. Through the use of multiple speakers, "Fantasia" pushed sound reproduction off the screen and into three-dimensions, putting the audience at the center of a 3-D sound experience. Since this early work, sound technology has advanced to more complex multi-speaker surround sound systems, but also 3-D headphone sound.
More recently, we've seen the emergence of VR, which aims to improve immersive experiences further by giving the audience not just a 3-D audio experience, but an entire 3-D video experience too. That's why the VR teams at Google and YouTube have been working to provide YouTube users with VR experiences with immersive spatial audio.
Spatial audio in VR
One of the challenges in VR production is sound design and spatial audio production. A major task for sound designers is to accurately associate sounds in 3-D space with visible objects within the 3-D video scene. Like the engine sound we mentioned before, a sound designer needs to correctly position the audio to accurately follow the visible position of the car in the scene. The car in this example is what is known as a diegetic sound source, because its position is visible or implied within the video scene. In a typical cinematic production, though, there will also be sounds that don't directly correspond to positions within the video scene, like voice-overs or narration, for example. Voiced narration (i.e. 'Red' in "The Shawshank Redemption") is typically not associated with any object within the video scene. This type of sound is known as a non-diegetic sound source. Another example would be background music, which has been present in cinematic experiences since the very beginning.
How does it work?
When you watch a VR video on a Head Mounted Display (HMD) like the Daydream View, the spatial audio rendering needs to accurately reproduce the intentions of the sound designer. How does it achieve this? Firstly, a spatial audio rendering engine needs to treat non-diegetic and diegetic sounds differently.
The audio processing for diegetic sounds is conceptually quite simple: The device knows how your head moves, and hence, how all the sounds need to be filtered, so that what you hear over headphones precisely reflects what is happening around you at that very moment. It is like creating a unique headphone mix especially for you every time you watch a movie. This way you can experience all the sounds with their true depth and spatial location, coming from all around you!
When it comes to non-diegetic sounds, the situation is quite different. These should be rendered as a standard stereophonic track, alongside immersive spatial audio content and preserve the original fidelity of music or narrator's voice. The viewer should experience them the same way that we are used to: in left/right stereo. (This is why you may hear the phrase "head-locked stereo.") Create spatial audio with head-locked stereo and upload to YouTube
YouTube now allows creators to join these two concepts together and augment immersive spatial audio with more traditional stereo content. When creators add two extra channels to their uploaded spatial audio soundtrack, they will now be interpreted as a head-locked stereo and won't go through the same processing algorithms that YouTube uses for spatial audio. In other words, it will sound exactly the same as more traditional audio uploaded to YouTube. See this YouTube Spatial Audio help page for a more detailed guide on how to prepare and upload spatial audio and head-locked stereo to YouTube. Also, make sure to check out the example video here:
YouTube viewers can already enjoy this new feature on YouTube Android/iOS apps, as well as Chrome, Opera and now also Mozilla Firefox web browsers. For the best experience, we recommend using YouTube VR with the Daydream View.
In July, as part of the Google News Initiative (GNI), we announced innovation funding to help newsrooms and publishers strengthen their online video capabilities and experiment with new formats for video journalism. Hundreds of organizations submitted proposals through an open application process and today we’re sharing the 87 recipients.
Hailing from 23 countries around the world, they represent a diverse array of broadcasters, traditional and digital publishers, local media, agencies and creators, but all share a commitment to quality journalism and a spirit of innovation.
Many of these projects are focused on expanding newsroom video operations and trying out new ways of reporting news through video — from reaching younger audiences online to exploring live and fact-checking formats. Other projects look at the sustainability of news organizations, including work on new business models and programs to support a healthy news ecosystem. Here’s a sample of some of the projects funded:
Advance Local (United States): U.S. publisher Advance Local will build out a new format for local news storytelling, enabling them to connect more deeply with their communities across the country. They will start in Michigan, where MLive Media Group (Mlive.com) will connect directly with its viewers, providing avenues for action on topics of important local interest, giving viewers the information they need to have their voice heard on issues of the day.
The Economist (United Kingdom): British publisher The Economist will strengthen its video production facilities and expertise, enabling it to launch a weekly video format that will explore the true story behind trending news topics. Through live streaming and audience engagement tools, viewers will be able to interact with the story along with the producers, their processes and sources. The new format aims to give viewers the tools to spot misinformation, analyze news sources and join the conversation.
HugoDécrypte (France): A top French news creator, HugoDécrypte will staff and train a production team to create a studio-based live news show. The show will form an on-screen meeting place for HugoDécrypte’s YouTube community to learn about and debate the key news issues of the day. It will consist of regular segments including news bulletins, fact-checking and interviews with well-known political figures and subject matter experts.
La Nación (Argentina): One of Argentina’s leading newspapers, La Nación will enhance their video operations at large. In business since 1870, La Nación has a rich history in print journalism, which they are extending to video. This funding will be used to grow their video team, improve digital video skills and increase output, enabling them to deliver engaging content, including behind the scenes snapshots of their hard-hitting investigative journalism and fresh takes on news of the day through video digests.
Narasi TV (Indonesia): Independent Indonesian journalist Najwa Shihab’s media company will mobilize its community across the country’s 34 provinces. It will host workshops to train budding citizen journalists on visual storytelling, news video production and media literacy, encouraging more Indonesians to become credible content creators as well as critical consumers of media. Meanwhile, Narasi TV’s own investigative journalism team will staff up their video team to produce more in-depth reports, particularly in hotly contested parts of the country in the run-up to Indonesia’s general elections.
Thairath (Thailand): The digital arm of one of Thailand’s oldest news publishers, Thairath, will create a rights management platform for Thailand’s freelance journalists. This platform will help Thai “stringers” more easily manage their footage rights from media companies. By protecting and promoting the important work of independent Thai journalists, the effort will support both the Thai media ecosystem and global news agencies seeking news about Thailand.
Today’s announcement reinforces our commitment to supporting a strong future for news video. Over the coming months, we’ll be sharing insights gained from the projects and giving newsrooms the opportunity to benefit from the learnings, as we work together to support the development of long-term, sustainable news video businesses.
For more information about YouTube’s work with the news industry, please visit our website. We look forward to seeing how our partners across the globe push the boundaries of video journalism.
Timothy Katz, Director of News Partnerships, YouTube
We’ve always used a mix of human reviewers and technology to address violative content on our platform, and in 2017 we started applying more advanced machine learning technology to flag content for review by our teams. This combination of smart detection technology and highly-trained human reviewers has enabled us to consistently enforce our policies with increasing speed.
We are committed to tackling the challenge of quickly removing content that violates our Community Guidelines and reporting on our progress. That’s why in April we launched a quarterly YouTube Community Guidelines Enforcement Report. As part of this ongoing commitment to transparency, today we’re expanding the report to include additional data like channel removals, the number of comments removed, and the policy reason why a video or channel was removed.
Focus on removing violative content before it is viewed
We previously shared how technology is helping our human review teams remove content with speed and volume that could not be achieved with people alone. Finding all violative content on YouTube is an immense challenge, but we see this as one of our core responsibilities and are focused on continuously working towards removing this content before it is widely viewed.
From July to September 2018, we removed 7.8 million videos
And 81% of these videos were first detected by machines
Of those detected by machines, 74.5% had never received a single view
When we detect a video that violates our Guidelines, we remove the video and apply a strike to the channel. We terminate entire channels if they are dedicated to posting content prohibited by our Community Guidelines or contain a single egregious violation, like child sexual exploitation. The vast majority of attempted abuse comes from bad actors trying to upload spam or adult content: over 90% of the channels and over 80% of the videos that we removed in September 2018 were removed for violating our policies on spam or adult content.
Looking specifically at the most egregious, but low-volume areas, like violent extremism and child safety, our significant investment in fighting this type of content is having an impact: Well over 90% of the videos uploaded in September 2018 and removed for Violent Extremism or Child Safety had fewer than 10 views.
Each quarter we may see these numbers fluctuate, especially when our teams tighten our policies or enforcement on a certain category to remove more content. For example, over the last year we’ve strengthened our child safety enforcement, regularly consulting with experts to make sure our policies capture a broad range of content that may be harmful to children, including things like minors fighting or engaging in potentially dangerous dares. Accordingly, we saw that 10.2% of video removals were for child safety, while Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM) represents a fraction of a percent of the content we remove.
Making comments safer
As with videos, we use a combination of smart detection technology and human reviewers to flag, review, and remove spam, hate speech, and other abuse in comments.
We’ve also built tools that allow creators to moderate comments on their videos. For example, creators can choose to hold all comments for review, or to automatically hold comments that have links or may contain offensive content. Over one million creators now use these tools to moderate their channel’s comments.1
We’ve also been increasing our enforcement against violative comments:
From July to September of 2018, our teams removed over 224 million comments for violating our Community Guidelines.
The majority of removals were for spam and the total number of removals represents a fraction of the billions of comments posted on YouTube each quarter.
As we have removed more comments, we’ve seen our comment ecosystem actually grow, not shrink. Daily users are 11% more likely to be commenters than they were last year.
We are committed to making sure that YouTube remains a vibrant community, where creativity flourishes, independent creators make their living, and people connect worldwide over shared passions and interests. That means we will be unwavering in our fight against bad actors on our platform and our efforts to remove egregious content before it is viewed. We know there is more work to do and we are continuing to invest in people and technology to remove violative content quickly. We look forward to providing you with more updates.
YouTube Team
1 Creator comment removals on their own channels are not included in our reporting as they are based on opt-in creator tools and not a review by our teams to determine a Community Guidelines violation.
At YouTube Music, we are constantly striving to give fans more ways to explore the world of music. Today, we are making the previously announced YouTube Charts available in YouTube Music as playlists so fans in our 29 launched markets can effortlessly explore the hottest songs and videos both globally and locally.
Looking to check out the top most-played songs this week on YouTube, the most-viewed music videos, or see what’s trending? We’ve got you covered! Fans can now easily access YouTube Charts as playlists that will appear on users’ home screens or by search. It’s ALL here and easy to find, watch and listen to what’s popular, rising and trending both locally and globally — all within YouTube Music.
Every country — all 29 markets — will get five charts playlists: three specific to their country and two global lists. Fans can also add their favorite charts to their library so they can stay up-to-date on what’s trending on the platform.
YouTube Charts are the go-to destination to see what music is hot on YouTube and now include the following within YouTube Music:
Top 100 Songs: The most played songs on YouTube (global and local charts available)
Top 100 Music Videos: The most viewed music videos (global and local charts available)
The Top Music Videos chart goes beyond the song and gives fans the chance to dive into the most viewed official music videos on the platform. Top Videos is updated weekly on Sunday at 12 p.m. PST. Each country will get both a global and country-specific version of this chart. This week, the U.S. list is topped by the same two tracks as the songs list, with Nicki Minaj at #3 with "Good Form ft. Lil Wayne."
Top 20 Trending (local chart)
The new Trending chart is updated multiple times a day to provide a unique, real-time view of the hottest new music fans are enjoying in a specific country. The Trending chart is YouTube’s first dedicated external signal of the most-viewed new music on the platform, providing an instant snapshot of what is driving music culture. Ariana Grande completes her clean sweep in the U.S. this week, with XXXTENTACION’s "Guardian angel" and Kodak Black’s "Calling My Spirit" rounding out the top 3.
The charts, currently topped globally by Ariana Grande’s "thank u, next," are the most accurate reflection of what’s happening in music culture and based purely on the number of views from more than 1 billion global music fans on YouTube each month. Full details about how YouTube charts are calculated can be found here.
Elliott Breece, Product Manager at YouTube Music, recently listened to "If It Isn’t Love"
In 2018, you danced your heart out to Drake, yodeled in Walmart, and played a lot of Fortnite. As we prepare to head into 2019, it's time for our annual look back at the year that was in video and the trends that you made possible.
This year was marked by surprising celebrity moments. In February, Kylie Jenner surprised the world with "To Our Daughter," an 11-minute film detailing her pregnancy and the birth of baby Stormi, which was watched over 53 million times on its way to becoming YouTube's global #1 Top Trending Video of 2018. Will Smith vlogged all over the world. Oh, and he also jumped out of a helicopter over the Grand Canyon on a dare. Rihanna started her own "Tutorial Tuesdays" makeup series. And, of course, Beyoncé's livestream from Coachella took #Beychella worldwide.
Following the success of last year’s monster hit "Despacito," Latin Music has continued to explode on YouTube. in 2018. In fact, eight of the ten most-watched music videos over the past year were by Latin artists.
It's also time for our annual Rewind mashup video. But rather than trying to sum up 2018's biggest memes, personalities, and hit videos ourselves, we tried something different this time around. We asked some of YouTube's biggest names to tell us what they wanted to see if they controlled Rewind.
Check out the full video below and head over to our Rewind site to get to know the creators and artists who shaped popular culture in 2018.
