Check out what each of these new mixes is bringing to you:
Discover Mix: Whether introducing you to an entirely new artist you’ve never heard before, or unearthing hidden, lesser-known gems from artists you’re already familiar with, Discover Mix will give you 50 tracks every week that help you expand your musical horizons. With new updates every Wednesday, it’s your go-to playlist to discover music.
New Release Mix: This mix is your one-stop shop for a playlist of all the most recent releases by your favorite artists (and others we think you’ll like). Expect a big update every Friday (when most new releases drop) along with mid-week releases sprinkled in throughout the week to ensure you are always up-to-date on the latest releases.
Your Mix: Your Mix is the perfect playlist for those times when you don’t want to think and just want to play something you know you’ll like. It’s full of songs by artists you know and love, and also mixes in some songs and artists you’ve never heard before, but that we think you’ll love. Small updates are made regularly, so the music never gets stale and there’s always something new in rotation.
The more you listen to and like songs, the better your mixes will be. New to YouTube Music? Don’t worry, we can start delivering a personalized experience after you’ve selected a couple of artists you like during setup, or even after listening to just a few songs!
Discover Mix, New Release Mix, and Your Mix are now available globally for all YouTube Music listeners. To check out your personalized mixes, download the YouTube Music app for iOS or Android or visit the webplayer to dive in.
These new mixes are just the beginning of an even more personalized YouTube Music, so stay tuned for more music mixed just for you!
But of course, it's also time to announce our annual lists of top trending videos and top music videos.
2019 saw creators transform into mainstream celebrities with genre-defying influence: James Charles and Tati’s back-and-forth transcended the beauty community; Shane Dawson continued to find success with his longform docuseries format and foray into the makeup world; and MrBeast’s ultra-charitable challenge videos united viewers across the internet.
Also on this year’s top trending list: A long-requested episode of Hot Ones, a meme-making moment from Soulja Boy, a conversation-starting short film, SNL’s most-watched sketch of 2019, an underdog victory in the ring, and an informational video on why spiders and bees are actually our friends.
Collectively, these 10 videos were watched 305 million times and for around 50 million hours. The channels behind them total more than 110 million subscribers.
In music, Lil Nas X emerged from obscurity to take the top spot, and powerhouse female artists (Ariana Grande, Billie Eilish) continued to transform the sound of pop.
Give the gift of endless entertainment to your friends and family this holiday season with YouTube gift codes, now available for purchase on Amazon in the U.S. Whether it’s for a friend miles away, a loved one at home, or a last minute gift, we’ve made it easy to treat someone to their favorite YouTube products.
Something for everyone
YouTube gift codes can be used to enjoy YouTube subscriptions, to buy or rent movies and shows, or to become a channel member on YouTube. Recipients can use their gift code towards a YouTube Premium subscription to watch uninterrupted — with ad-free, offline, and background — play. They can also enjoy these same benefits with YouTube Music Premium, a dedicated music streaming service that’s their guide to the entire world of music. For sports and entertainment fans alike, a YouTube TV subscription offers cable-free live and on-demand TV with 70+ channels and free unlimited cloud DVR storage space. Movie buffs can redeem their gift code to watch the latest and greatest movies and shows available on YouTube. And fitting with the giving spirit, recipients can use their gift code to support their favorite YouTube creators with a Channel Membership, which unlocks badges, emojis and creator perks.
Enter the recipient’s email address and a message.
Pick your delivery date and select purchase.
On the delivery date, the recipient will get a YouTube gift code delivered via email with instructions for redeeming on youtube.com/redeem. When redeemed, the gift code value will be added to the recipient’s Google Play balance, which can be used to make purchases on YouTube or Google Play.
More and more people turn to YouTube to catch up on the latest news or simply learn more about the topics they’re curious about — whether it’s climate change or a natural disaster. For topics like music or entertainment, relevance, newness and popularity are most helpful to understand what people are interested in. But for subjects such as news, science and historical events, where accuracy and authoritativeness are key, the quality of information and context matter most — much more than engagement. That's why we've re-doubled our efforts to raise authoritative sources to the top and introduced a suite of features to tackle this challenge holistically:
Elevating authoritative sources in our systems: In 2017, we started to prioritize authoritative voices, including news sources like CNN, Fox News, Jovem Pan, India Today and the Guardian, for news and information queries in search results and “watch next” panels. Let’s say you’re looking to learn more about a newsworthy event. For example, try searching for “Brexit.” While there will be slight variations, on average, 93% of the videos in global top 10 results come from high-authority channels. Authoritativeness is also important for evergreen topics prone to misinformation, such as videos about vaccines. In these cases, we aim to surface videos from experts, like public health institutions, in search results. Millions of search queries are getting this treatment today and we’re continually expanding to more topics and countries.
Providing reliable information faster for breaking news: Reliable information becomes especially critical as news is breaking. But as events are unfolding, it can take time to produce high-quality videos containing verified facts. So we've started providing short previews of text-based news articles in search results on YouTube, along with a reminder that breaking and developing news can rapidly change. We’ve also introduced Top News and Breaking News sections to highlight quality journalism. In fact, this year alone, we’ve seen that consumption on authoritative news partners’ channels has grown by 60 percent.
Providing context to users: Sometimes a video alone does not provide enough context to viewers about what they are watching. We want to make sure that people who watch videos about topics prone to misinformation are provided additional information while viewing. To that end, we’ve designed a variety of information panels that target different types of context, such as general topics and recent news prone to misinformation, or about publishers themselves. For example, when people watch videos that encourage viewers to skip the MMR vaccine, we show information panels to provide more basic scientific context, linking to third-party sources. Or if people are viewing news videos uploaded by a public broadcaster or a government-funded news outlet, we show informational notices underneath the video about the news outlet. Collectively, we’ve delivered more than 3.5 billion impressions across all of these information panels since June 2018 and we’re expanding these panels to more and more countries.
Reducing borderline content and harmful misinformation
Content that comes close to — but doesn’t quite cross the line of — violating our Community Guidelines is a fraction of 1% of what’s watched on YouTube in the U.S. To give a quick comparison, meditation videos (a fairly narrow category) have more daily watch time than borderline and harmful misinformation combined. That said, even a fraction of a percent is too much. So this past January, we announced we’d begin reducing recommendations of borderline content or videos that could misinform users in harmful ways. This work is still ramping up and we’ve expanded to more countries outside of the U.S., including the UK, Ireland, South Africa and other English-language markets. And we have begun expanding this effort to non-English-language markets, starting with Brazil, France, Germany, Mexico and Spain.
So how does this actually work? Determining what is harmful misinformation or borderline is tricky, especially for the wide variety of videos that are on YouTube. We rely on external evaluators located around the world to provide critical input on the quality of a video. And these evaluators use public guidelines to guide their work. Each evaluated video receives up to 9 different opinions and some critical areas require certified experts. For example, medical doctors provide guidance on the validity of videos about specific medical treatments to limit the spread of medical misinformation. Based on the consensus input from the evaluators, we use well-tested machine learning systems to build models. These models help review hundreds of thousands of hours of videos every day in order to find and limit the spread of borderline content. And over time, the accuracy of these systems will continue to improve.
Our work continues. We are exploring options to bring in external researchers to study our systems and we will continue to invest in more teams and new features. Nothing is more important to us than ensuring we are living up to our responsibility. We remain focused on maintaining that delicate balance which allows diverse voices to flourish on YouTube — including those that others will disagree with — while also protecting viewers, creators and the wider ecosystem from harmful content.
Follow