Hi there! My name is Janko Roettgers, and this is Lowpass. This week: YouTube’s evolution on the TV, and Spotify’s missing Vega OS app.

The YouTube app on your TV is about to undergo some massive changes, to the point where you might confuse it with Netflix, or any other paid streaming service, at first glance.

Instead of getting overwhelmed by a long, chaotic list of thumbnails as soon as you open the app, you’ll soon be greeted by massive banner images teasing the latest episodes of your favorite channels, ready for you to flick through. Those images, which are also at the top of individual channel pages, will look a lot crisper, thanks to YouTube bumping up its upload limits for thumbnails for the first time in a decade.

And, perhaps most significantly, a growing number of channels will feature shows in a more familiar format. Videos will be organized by seasons and episodes, ready to be binge-watched, just like on Netflix. “When viewers watch [this] content, they'll go episode to episode based on how it's organized,” explains YouTube senior director of product management Kurt Wilms. “When they turn on the TV a day later, they can continue right where they left off in the show.”

It’s all part of a move by YouTube to live up to viewers’ expectations on the big screen: Over the past few years, the service has seen massive growth of living room usage, to the point where people now watch over a billion hours’ worth of YouTube videos on TV every single day, and YouTube accounts for 12.6 percent of all TV viewing in the United States — about as much as Netflix, Disney Plus, Hulu, and ESPN Plus combined.

In other words: YouTube has become the new TV. Now, it also wants to look like it.

The rollout of shows across YouTube channels has been a long time coming: First announced a little over a year ago, the feature was initially developed several years back when YouTube began working on a channel store for third-party video services on its platform. Bringing that type of subscription content directly into the YouTube app required listing individual TV shows with complete seasons on its platform.

“Shows was born out of what we call Primetime Channels,” Wilms explains. “We made big, beautiful show pages for our Primetime Channel content. When we were building that and originally rolling it out, we realized: Creators would love this feature too.”

At the core of the decision to expand shows to creators was the realization that the lines between professional and user-generated content were increasingly getting blurry. “For us, it's no different if you're a White Lotus or you're Michelle Khare with Challenge Accepted. The content is the same. The way you can consume it is the same. We see our viewers bouncing between both.”

With viewers increasingly watching their videos on TV, YouTube has also seen creators adapt and expand beyond short, viral clips. “They're moving towards more episodic, cinematic content,” Wilms says. “Great storytelling. Arcs that continue, video after video.” And, one might add, higher-resolution videos, with 4K uploads up 35 percent year over year.

Another trend has been the growth of video podcasts, with over a billion people consuming podcasts on YouTube every month. A growing chunk of that usage happens on TV. “There's over 400 million hours of podcasts watched just in the living room every month,” Wilms says. “We talk about podcasts as the new late-night talk show.”

Just as broadcasters are retreating from the late-night format, YouTube is now making those podcasts look more like TV shows in its app as well. “All the podcasts on YouTube now also get this show treatment,” Wilms confirms.

The rollout of the new Shows format, as well as the redesign of the TV app’s homescreen, was announced Wednesday alongside a few other features that also include AI upscaling of lower-resolution videos and simplified TV-based shopping.

All of this comes after years of YouTube seemingly focusing the majority of its resources on mobile, and new formats like Shorts, while its TV app languished. Sure, there were some occasional updates here and there. But at its core, YouTube didn’t seem quite ready to embrace the big screen.

Case in point: For the longest time, creators couldn’t upload thumbnail images that were larger than 2MB, and YouTube would automatically rescale those images to 720p. “Over 10 years ago was the last time we changed how uploading a video thumbnail worked,” acknowledges Wilms. With this week’s changes, uploads can be up to 50MB in size, and YouTube will display them in 4K on modern TVs.

That change may seem minuscule, but it’s part of a broader issue that has confounded streaming industry and Hollywood insiders for some time. YouTube’s ascent to the biggest force in television appeared almost entirely accidental, driven by audience behavior changes much more so than by some big, coordinated strategy. Wurl CEO Dave Bernath put it this way during a recent keynote presentation about the rise of YouTube on TV: “The scary thing about this is that they’ve really done it without even trying.”

Now we’ll get to see what it’s like when YouTube is actually trying.

I recently got my hands on Amazon’s new Fire TV Stick 4K Select, which is the company’s first TV device running Vega OS instead of the legacy Android-based Fire OS. All in all, the experience looks and feels just like using any other Fire TV device, with a few differences.

Perhaps the biggest downside: There is no Spotify app for the Select stick. Instead, consumers are being asked to install an app called “Spotify Connect.” This app then prompts them to ask Alexa to “Connect to Spotify” and then cast music from the Spotify app on their phone, if they want to listen to something on their TV.

Alternatively, consumers can also use the Alexa Spotify integration with the device, according to Amazon spokesperson Melanie Garvey. “Both options provide full access to your Spotify content,” Garvey told me via email.

The absence of a full-blown Spotify app is nonetheless confusing, and highlights some of the challenges Amazon is facing as it strives to transition from Android to Vega for its streaming devices. 

With Vega being a new, Linux-based OS, Amazon has been encouraging publishers to rebuild their apps for the new platform. However, many publishers already have to build bespoke apps for a myriad of different smart TV platforms, and some major companies appear to be hesitant to throw resources at Vega until they see significant traction.

To make up for that, Amazon has come up with an interesting band-aid: Popular apps that haven’t been ported to Vega yet are simply being run on an Android instance hosted in the cloud, and then streamed to consumer devices. This cloud streaming approach works remarkably well: I noticed no real latency differences between browsing the video catalogs of native Vega apps and a cloud-hosted Android apps.

However, cloud-hosted apps don’t support all of the features that native apps do, with local network control being notably amiss. Amazon could have theoretically run the Spotify Fire TV app in the cloud, but consumers wouldn’t have been able to cast to the app, add songs to its queue from their phone, and more. Instead, the company built a custom app for Spotify Connect, the music service’s local networking protocol.

It’s a clunky solution, made worse by the fact that this isn't a system-level integration of Spotify Connect. While your Echo speaker will always show up as a playback target in your Spotify mobile app, you’ll have to frequently relaunch the Spotify Connect app on the Fire TV Stick 4K Selec to make casting work. Clearly, Amazon is hoping Spotify will eventually port its full-blown app to Vega.

Will the music service do so? “We're committed to working with all our partners to deliver great experiences," said Spotify spokesperson Farrin Jay when connected for this story, while declining to share further details.

“We’re continuing to work closely with our partners to build their apps for Vega,” added Amazon’s Garvey. “Native versions of apps will be added as they are completed.”

What Hollywood’s next potential merger means for streaming. In my latest Fast Company story, I take a look at the consequences a potential Warner Bros. Discovery acquisition could have on apps, TV channels and subscription fees.

Apple TV is getting a new Spotify app. Speaking of Spotify in the living room: The music service’s new Apple TV app features support for music videos and podcasts.

CNN’s new streaming service is here. CNN ALL Access costs $6.99 per month; CNN is removing its live stream from HBO Max on November 17 to boost interest in All Access.

Bloomberg reviews Aamzon’s new Echo speakers. The Echo Dot Max impresses, but the Echo Studio is not worth the extra money, according to Bloomberg’s Chris Welch, once again proving that it’s hard for tech companies to build premium speakers.

Meta Reality Labs sold more Quests in Q3 than expected. Losses for immersive hardware were lower than expected last quarter, which the company attributes to retailers stocking up earlier than last year.

Google and Magic Leap will keep working together. The two companies have committed to working together for another three years.

The government shutdown is bad for gadget makers. With the FCC being affected by the shutdown, new gadgets can’t get certified, which prevents manufacturers from selling them.

Xbox sales are down 29 percent. Yikes! This comes after tariff-related price increases brought the starting price of the Xbox Series X to $600.

Universal Music Group settles with Udio. As part of the settlement agreement, Udio will launch a subscription service for the creation of songs based on a licensed catalog.

One day, I’ll have a perfect idea for a customer weeks before Halloween. Once again, this year, that’s not happening. Do you happen to have any last-minute ideas for me? Let me know by responding to this email!

Thanks for reading, have a great weekend!

Image credits: YouTube, Lowpass