YouTube is stealthily dominating our living rooms
It has taken over while (and because) we weren’t paying attention
THE day is fast approaching when you could rib a young ’un about their having a face for radio, and they might not understand the insult. Where to even begin? First, you’d have to explain “radio” to your young listener.
“It’s like a podcast,” you’d say, trying not to sound middle-aged and incredulous. Your callow conversation partner might still not know what you mean, and this would be all YouTube’s fault. The video-sharing platform, which turned 20 last week, has quietly taken over our living rooms while (and because) we weren’t paying attention.
Today, the podcast-sphere is the latest of YouTube’s annexed territories, co-opted into becoming a visual medium. Last year, 31 per cent of weekly podcast listeners aged 13 and older in the United States used YouTube as their go-to app for podcasts, compared to the 27 per cent and 15 per cent that used Spotify and Apple Podcasts, respectively.
Younger listeners, especially, expect a full-blown television experience from podcasts today, in which they can see the hosts’ facial expressions and watch video cutaways that illustrate what is being said. It is no longer enough to sound like Ira Glass – you will need the camera work and editing chops of MrBeast, too.
Little wonder then that on a recent episode, Steven Bartlett, the host of the hit podcast The Diary of a CEO, said he was gunning for the milestone subscriber number of 10 million – not on a podcast platform, but on YouTube, where he currently has 9.44 million subscribers.
YouTube isn’t just encroaching on podcast platforms, but on video streaming services too. Last year, it surpassed Netflix in terms of TV viewership in the US, accounting for 11.1 per cent of all TV viewing time – the largest share ever for a streaming platform.
Some of it is down to YouTube’s more accessible ad-supported model as opposed to Netflix’s subscriber-based one. It also helps that unlike Netflix, YouTube doesn’t have to fund its own content. But more importantly, the zeitgeist today is simply on YouTube’s side. We no longer consume, we nibble. We do not watch something, we simply let it play.
With its wealth of meandering and conversational videos, the platform has been perfect for this era of semi-attention. It has succeeded in becoming the primary visual backdrop and aural soundtrack of our home lives, seamlessly advancing and receding on the landscape of our consciousness, in tandem with the exact amount of preoccupation we are currently feeling.
Today, nothing is just a video or piece of audio – it is “content”. Platforms such as Instagram and TikTok operate monstrously well on this principle, their users churning out video shorts and meme gifs devoid of a larger context. YouTube does this as well, but across a larger breadth of video lengths – you could watch a three-hour long podcast interview, or a 15-second highlight reel of the episode.
Its success is borne out by the numbers, too. YouTube’s Q4 2024 ad sales hit a record US$10.5 billion, it said earlier this month. It now has 100 million music and premium tier subscribers, which, granted, is far less than the 300 million subscribers that Netflix has.
But YouTube is bound to close that gap – for if anything is going to push non-paying users into the premium tier, it is that infernal Shopee ad jingle.
