YouTube turns 20 and celebrates with new features and some fun facts

It’s hard to believe, but YouTube is celebrating its 20th anniversary. What started with a simple 19-second clip has exploded into a global platform boasting over 20 trillion uploaded videos spanning music, Shorts, podcasts, and countless other formats. Two decades is a significant milestone, and YouTube is marking the occasion by sharing some impressive statistics and rolling out a few new features for users.

Interesting stats

Fittingly for its 20th birthday, YouTube revealed that an average of over 20 million videos are uploaded daily. Community engagement remains incredibly high as well, with users leaving over 100 million comments daily in 2024, and creators ‘hearting’ comments from about 10 million viewers each day. Last year alone, videos garnered an average of over 3.5 billion likes daily.

It’s also a milestone year for YouTube Music and YouTube Kids, both turning 10. Interestingly, YouTube Music’s original code name was ‘Woodstock’. On the music front, while over 300 videos have joined the billion-views club, YouTube highlighted the five fastest: Adele’s “Hello” (88 days), Ed Sheeran’s “Shape of You” tied with Luis Fonsi’s “Despacito” (97 days), J Balvin’s “Mi Gente” (103 days), and ROSÉ & Bruno Mars’ “APT.” (105 days).

Some new features

Beyond the stats, YouTube is introducing several new functionalities. YouTube TV members will soon get experimental access to build custom multiview streams with select non-sports content, starting with a small channel group before expanding. Additionally, the ability for creators to use voice replies for comments, previously tested with a small group, will roll out more broadly later this year.

For YouTube Premium and Music subscribers using iOS or Android in select English-speaking countries (more languages and locations are planned), a new feature called ‘Ask Music’ allows users to describe a mood or type of music to generate a personalized radio station.

YouTube Premium members on mobile are also getting more granular playback speed controls, with options now extending beyond 2x up to a new 4x speed setting. Finally, improvements are coming to the TV viewing experience this summer, promising easier navigation, better playback and quality adjustments, and more streamlined access to comments, channel info, and subscriptions.

20 years is a significant marker for a platform that has fundamentally changed online video. As YouTube enters its third decade, it continues to evolve its features and scale its operations massively, and as those new features continue to show up and change the way we interact with online video content, we’re looking forward to what the next 20 years hold.