With the amount of attention audio content is getting lately, we might as well rebrand to Podcastfilter.
Eh. Not quite the same ring, huh?
Anyway, on top of new data dumps, Netflix’s deals with Jay Shetty and The Breakfast Club, and Spotify’s creator memberships + gen AI podcasts, we now have YouTube adding podcasts to Premium’s perk pool.
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As you probably know, YouTube Premium debuted in 2018 and originally cost $9.99/month. It was basically YouTube’s answer to Netflix; its primary perk was access to YouTube’s slate of original programming. Now, in 2026, YouTube no longer makes original programming, Premium costs $15.99/month, and subscribers’ biggest perk is no ads.
But there are some other perks–including three new ones specifically aimed at podcast listeners.
In a company blog post, YouTube said it’s noticed Premium subscribers tend to be “podcast super-users.”
“In April 2026, YouTube Premium users watched over 800 million hours of podcasts,” it wrote.
We see why there’s a correlation: Podcast episodes tend to be long, and on YouTube, longer videos mean longer (and sometimes more frequent) ad breaks. Someone who consumes a lot of podcast episodes probably doesn’t want to deal with constant interruptions.
“Premium subscribers already enjoy podcasts with features like background play, Jump ahead, and faster playback speeds,” YouTube added. “Today, we’re introducing new updates that elevate the overall YouTube Premium experience that we know podcast fans will especially love.”
Those three updates include:
- “On-the-go mode,” which introduces a Spotify-esque control panel with bigger, simplified controls for things like play, pause, skip forward, and go back, so people who are listening to ‘casts on their mobile phones (and probably during activities like work, exercise, or commuting) can navigate them quicker. YouTube says this feature is meant to “optimize how you listen to your favorite podcasts, talk shows, true crime series, and more.”
- Auto speed, which YouTube says “intelligently adjusts playback during relevant moments like slower speech or information-dense segments.” Plenty of people listen to podcasts on 1.5x or 2x, and this again is aimed at mitigating any issues that might arise when they’re hands-free and can’t manually slow down playback during certain moments.
- and finally an expansion of its chatbot Ask feature, which now will respond to users asking for personalized podcast recommendations “based on genres, your current mood, or shows you already love.”
These updates are overall small quality of life changes, but they reaffirm YouTube’s focus on podcasts–and keeping listeners on its platform.
