YouTube reveals new features

• YouTube made a number of announcements at Made on YouTube, the company’s annual event.

  • YouTube is to add a voice likeness detection tool, to help creators sign up for deepfake detection. The company is also launching A/B video testing, where different videos can be tried to see which work better.
  • YouTube Music premium subscribers will get a “new personalized AI-audio guide available in the YouTube Music app that delivers a quick, weekly spoken preview of recommended podcasts and digs into why you’ll like them, before jumping into the suggested episodes — completely eyes-optional and hands-free”.
  • Live video on YouTube get an update, too, with co-hosting, live reactions, and live auto-dubbing.

• Apple Podcasts Connect seems to have quietly tweaked its listening figures for certain dates. We understand that Apple Podcasts noticed a discrepancy and reprocessed the data.

  • Data we screenshotted on Sep 16 appeared to claim, on average, that listeners were consuming 176% of our Jul 9 show. Now, the same data we screenshotted today suggests average consumption of that episode was 85%. Similarly, our Jul 6 show had “average consumption” of 166%; but now that number is 83%.
  • It’s notable that the number of “plays” has significantly declined on both affected episodes, as well as the consumption data. However, our Jul 1 show still suggests average consumption of 127% (which, we’d suggest, probably isn’t true).
  • Our podcast is comparatively short, but we’re aware of other, significantly larger, podcasts that have shown the same over-consumption issue.

• Goalhanger’s accounts for 2025 are now available in the UK’s Companies House. The accounts contain a lot of detail on how the company operates; including a breakdown of the £37mn (US $49mn) revenue: 67% from advertising, 25% from memberships, 4% from events, and 2% from “commissions” (presumably affiliate deals). The company had 54 staff, and earned 38% of its revenue from the UK, and 46% from the US (from Spotify, it appears).

• As we type this, the Apple Podcasts “top self-improvement shows” for the UK contains The Mel Robbins podcast at #2, and, um, The Mel Robbins Podcast at #28. The second one is suspiciously “by Mel Robinss”, with two “s”s, and is hosted on Spreaker. Or, rather, was hosted on Spreaker: the pirated show has been pulled down. (This issue is as old as free podcast hosts: we reported this happening on Anchor in August 2020).

• Nigerian music journalist Joey Akan, the host of Afrobeats Intelligence, has been inducted into the PodFest Naija Hall of Fame. The formal recognition will happen today.

• Attribution platform Fairing has partnered with Podscribe to offer show-level attribution to podcasts. Using post-purchase surveys, the tool can add additional data to campaigns that may be otherwise lost.

• Further reading: The Podglomerate posts trends and key takeaways from Podcast Movement (including a write-up of our own Editor’s talk) … John McDermott writes “what podcasting conferences need to be”. It looks like our Editor is up for a lot of work … Podcast Review has interviewed the team behind Goalhanger Drama, the company’s new audio drama unit.

• The Podcast Weekly Review will be published on Sunday this week. Something went wrong with the recording.

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• Spotted a pirate podcast? Here’s how to report them.

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