Latest news with #SteveMcLendon
Hans India
16-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Hans India
YouTube Launches Weekly Podcast Chart, Joe Rogan Claims Top Spot
YouTube has officially launched its own weekly podcast chart, and Joe Rogan is leading the pack. The Joe Rogan Experience ranked number one on the new chart for the week of May 5th to 11th, followed by Kill Tony, Rotten Mango, and 48 Hours. The new chart highlights the top 100 podcasts in the United States based on total watch time, according to YouTube podcast lead Steve McLendon. It will be updated every Wednesday and will only include full podcast playlists that creators have marked as 'podcasts' during the upload process. Playlists made up of clips or Shorts won't be eligible. This move reinforces YouTube's growing role in podcast consumption. Earlier this year, the platform revealed that over 1 billion people use YouTube each month to access podcast content, significantly outpacing Spotify's 100 million listeners reported in 2023. McLendon added that YouTube plans to roll out more podcast-focused features and expand the chart to additional regions in the future, further solidifying its position in the podcasting world.
The Verge
15-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Verge
YouTube now has a podcast chart, and Joe Rogan is on top
YouTube now has a chart that tracks the top 100 podcasts in the US. The Joe Rogan Experience took the number one spot during the week of May 5th to the 11th, followed by Kill Tony, Rotten Mango, and 48 Hours. YouTube will update the chart every Wednesday and rank each show by watchtime, according to a blog post from YouTube's Steve McLendon. The chart will include playlists 'designated as 'podcasts' by the creator in the upload process, and will not include playlists that contain only clips or Shorts.' Over the years, YouTube has established itself as one of the top platforms for listening to – or watching – podcasts. In February, YouTube announced that more than 1 billion people tune into podcasts on the platform each month, far more than the 100 million regular podcast listeners Spotify reported in 2023.
Yahoo
26-02-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
AI tools can help ‘fuel creativity', YouTube executive says
AI tools can help 'fuel creativity' by removing some of the 'drudgery' from work, a YouTube executive has said. Steve McLendon, podcast expert and YouTube group product lead, was speaking as the Google-owned video platform announced it had reached one billion monthly users for podcast content on the platform for the first time. Some have raised concerns about the possible impact of generative AI tools on the workforce, with fears that AI could replace humans at carrying out administrative tasks in years to come. But Mr McLendon said he believed such tools would in fact help workers, particularly those in creative roles, by freeing them from admin tasks to focus on 'the things they want to do'. 'I think as it related to podcasts and creators – really creators across YouTube – I think a lot of these AI products really are tools that will help fuel creativity,' he told the PA news agency. 'If you think of the creation process, there's a lot of drudgery in that process, and certainly from my team's perspective, we're trying to think about ways to help creators be more creative and have more time to do the things that they want to do, as opposed to some of the drudgery work. 'And that's where I think that AI tooling is actually going to unlock a tremendous amount of value for creators, so really excited to see where that goes.' Last year, Google made headlines when it added an audio feature to its AI-powered research tool, NotebookLM, which can turn large documents, such as reports, into AI-generated audio content that sounds similar to a podcast. Mr McLendon said the tool tended to use the same two voices and adopt a similar tone no matter the topic – suggesting it was unlikely to rival human podcasters – but added that the technology was something that 'people can use in their personal lives around productivity'. 'So, I have a long article, or a 50-page document, I don't have time to read it. Maybe I want to listen to a summary of it and be able to engage with it that way,' he said. On YouTube's podcast milestone, he said it highlighted the rise in popularity of podcasts as a broadcast medium in recent years, but also echoed how television had previously revolutionised broadcasting into people's homes. 'I'm not sure that people really think of how big and prevalent podcasting is – certainly, they don't think about how big and prevalent podcasting is on YouTube,' he said. 'It speaks to how podcasts have really connected with audiences all around the world. 'Broadcasting, I would say, has evolved. 'I think video has been an accelerant to podcast engagement and audience building in particular – podcasts are oftentimes really intimate – you have a relationship with the person you listen to in your ear every day, and being able to see that person I actually think really deepens that relationship. 'It's funny, I also think that television served that purpose in people's homes for a long time – televisions were like radios in people's homes – and if you think of YouTube as evolving what television is, it's unsurprising that it's also evolving what radio is, particularly in the home.'
