Morning 👋

Podcasts 🎙are coming to YouTube Music. The streaming music service plans to add podcasts, YouTube’s head of podcasting, Kai Chuk, told Ariel Shapiro at Hot Pod Summit. The addition will pit YouTube Music even more directly against Spotify, which has looked to podcasts, and big exclusives like Joe Rogan, and Alex Cooper, as a way to retain users and grow its audience.

TikTok owner ByteDance has quietly launched a new app called Lemon8 in the UK and the US, and is paying creators to post on it, according to industry insiders.

ByteDance has been paying creators in the UK to post on the app in recent weeks, three influencers told Insider. 

The picture-based app describes itself as a "lifestyle community," and its main feed is divided into a "Following" and a "For You," like TikTok, but can be sorted by content categories like "Beauty," "Fashion," and "Food." Another page, similar to Instagram's Explore tab, includes content organized by hashtags. The app store description also mentions that trending content can be found by "searching keywords."

Reuters previously reported that Lemon8 appeared to be an attempt to replicate the success of China's Xiaohongshu, a "shopping and lifestyle recommendations app."

Seven influencers who spoke with Insider said a good Lemon8 post includes a high-quality photo carousel and a lengthy caption with lots of specific details about a topic — for example, a step-by-step makeup tutorial or recipe, or a guide on how to style a piece of clothing.

Creator Ese Nuesiri said Lemon8 reminded them of "Pinterest and Instagram when they just started." Another creator, Shantania Beckford, described it as a mix of Instagram and Pinterest, and added that it was more detail-oriented than other social-media platforms.

Meta is the latest to join the hunt, following Twitter and Snap with the announcement this week of new subscription tiers for its Facebook and Instagram services that will cost web users $11.99 a month.

The wide range of features the companies have included in their subscription offerings highlight that this is a period of experimentation. They have yet to work out what they should or shouldn’t charge for, as they try to boost profits while at the same time protecting the overall health of their networks.

One idea is to let paying customers see less advertising, as Twitter has promised. This may have strong appeal for some, but it amounts to an admission that the ad-filled experience delivered to the majority of people is inferior — not a message that will be welcomed by the advertisers who are paying most platforms’ bills.

The existence of an “ad-lite” or even ad-free tier also reduces the incentive to improve the experience of “free” users who don’t get this relief. There is an assumption that if they are unhappy, they can always switch to a subscription.

Other features include: 

• Building a higher level of security security. Meta says it verifies subscribers’ accounts and monitors them to prevent impersonation.
• Increased visibility. The third approach is giving some users special privileges that increase their influence — but this risks detracting from everyone else’s experience. Meta’s new algorithms will single out subscribers for special attention, making their profiles appear more prominently in search results and spreading their posts more widely.