Today, Neal Mohan, YouTube’s Chief Executive Officer, released his 2024 priorities for the service. In that letter, he also announced that YouTube TV now has 8 million subscribers, making it the largest live TV streaming service.
“We’re also seeing growing consumer interest in our subscription services. We’re excited to announce that we have more than 8 million subscribers to YouTube TV. And we passed 100 million Music and Premium subscribers, including trials. Music subscriptions help us deliver on our goal to be the best place for artists to connect with fans, from insider access to Coachella to Shorts challenges with NewJeans, Dua Lipa, Tate McRae, and more.”
With this jump, YouTube TV has nearly doubled the subscribers of Hulu + Live TV, the next largest TV service. This news comes as YouTube TV successful used its NFL Sunday Ticket exclusivity to help drive up subscribers. To help keep customers, YouTube TV has also been rolling out new improvements, including:
Improved Multiview
One of YouTube TV’s best features is the ability to watch up to four sporting or news events at once on the same screen. The only downside has been the fact that customers have been unable to pick what “events” are in these four windows. Instead, YouTube TV gives several premade multiview options to choose from. Now YouTube TV is testing a method to give subscribers the ability to pick the events they want in those windows.
last week, YouTube TV started to give some NBA League Pass subscribers the ability to pick the games they want to watch from a preselected list. From there, YouTube TV creates a multiview channel for you to watch the games you choose. Google says this feature is coming to all devices that support multiview, and you can only create these channels from preselected NBA games. Sadly, you can’t pick any channel you want but only those from a list of preselected games to create your own multiview channel.
Google reached out to Cord Cutters News to clarify that this new update makes it easier to find the combinations of available multiview vs. creating new customer feeds for each user.
Improved Picture Quality
Google is adding YouTube’s improved 1080p picture quality with 1080p Enhanced mode to YouTube TV. Google confirmed to Cord Cutters News that this new Enhanced 1080p60 is coming to YouTube TV and Primetime channels viewers who have a 4K-compatible streaming device. This will be YouTube TV’s highest quality video they offer.
Enhanced 1080p started to hit YouTube in April 2023 on mobile and August on other devices. This advanced version of 1080p offers a crisper-smother image, especially for sports streaming. YouTube TV has promised higher bitrates for some time, and it is rolling out to more devices, including the Apple TV.
The question now is can YouTube TV keep these subscribers as the NFL season comes to an end.