After months of beta testing in India, YouTube Shorts has been launched in the United States. The company’s short-form video experience and TikTok rival was introduced in September, after which it was being beta-tested in India.

YouTube said that it has partnerships with 250 music labels and publishers such as Sony Music Entertainment and Publishing, Universal Music Group’s labels and publishing companies, Warner Music Group, Merlin, 300 Entertainment, Kobalt and Beggars, among others. Music edits and dance make up a big portion of the content material on its rival, TikTok.

On YouTube’s official blog, Todd Sherman, the product lead for YouTube Shorts, said, “Since introducing our initial beta in India, we’ve already started to see creators having fun with Shorts, and the number of Indian channels using our creation tools has more than tripled since the beginning of December alone. People are also watching more and more Shorts around the globe - the YouTube Shorts player has now surpassed 6.5 billion daily views globally.”

How does it work?

Sherman stated in the blog that for the Shorts beta in India, there were “foundational creation tools, like a multi-segment camera to string multiple video clips together, the ability to record with music, control speed settings, and more”. Along with these, for the US, the company has added more features, “like the ability to add text to specific points in your video”. Users will be able to sample audio from other Shorts, too, so that they can remix it into their own creations.

Benefits for users

Creators can reap the benefits of YouTube’s whole video library — billions of movies from across the world — to remix, edit, and work with. The creator device, launched in the US, helps with this with a faucet of a button.

Also, YouTube Shorts can take customers to the creators’ YouTube channel, which may help them build their subscriber base more effectively.

The greatest draw for YouTube Shorts could be the probability for creators to make their own channel.

The “bell notifications”, however, have been disabled for YouTube Shorts movies.

Monetising content

Talking about monetising the content, Sherman that in the same way that “YouTube has helped an entire generation of creators turn their creativity into businesses”, the company is “taking a fresh look at what it means to monetise Shorts and reward creators for their content”.

First Published:Mar 20, 2021 1:06 PM IST