YouTube recently made a significant adjustment to its Partner Program that would enable makers of short-form videos to profit significantly more from the site. The business disclosed that it would distribute ad money to producers on YouTube Shorts, a service that competes with TikTok. The modifications, which take effect “early next year,” may assist YouTube in luring artists away from TikTok, where celebrities have voiced complaints about the app’s meagre creator fund rewards. At a press conference to announce the announcement, YouTube Chief Product Officer Neal Mahon said, “This is the first time meaningful revenue sharing is being offered for short-form video on any platform at scale.
Creators who get 10 million views on Shorts in a 90-day period and have at least 1,000 subscribers can apply to join the Partner Arrangement under the new income sharing programme. Similar to TikTok, advertising on Shorts are interspersed with videos in the feed. (The business tested running advertisements on Shorts in May.) According to Mohan, the creators will each receive a portion of the advertising revenue. Regardless of whether they incorporate music, creators will receive a 45 percent portion of the advertising. According to him, even if they incorporate music, each creator still receives payment based on their proportion of all Shorts views. Additionally, the business announced that it would begin testing its tipping function, known as Super Thanks, in Shorts “with a thorough deployment.”
YouTube has a specific $100 million creator fund for Shorts up until this point. However, artists have long complained that these kinds of funding are inadequate and pale in comparison to the sums that the most successful artists may earn from longer form videos where they receive a cut of the ad money. For instance, Jimmy Donaldson, better known on YouTube as Mr. Beast, said earlier this year that despite receiving more than a billion views on TikTok, he had only made $15,000 from the platform. A well-known figure among YouTube’s highest-paid creators, Donaldson earned $54 million there in 2021. In May, TikTok announced that TikTok Pulse, a revenue-sharing initiative, was just getting started.
A new Partner Program tier was also made public by YouTube in an effort to make it simpler for up-and-coming producers to begin making money off of their work. According to Mahon, the “Fan Funding” tier’s “reduced requirements” will make it easier to use features like Super Thanks, Super Chat, stickers, and channel memberships. In 2023, YouTube promised to provide additional information on the standards. A component of YouTube Studio called Creator Music, where creators can buy “cheap, high-quality music licences that offer them full monetization potential,” was finally unveiled by the company. “Keep the same income share they’d typically make on videos without any music,” according to those who purchase the rights. Additionally, tracks from Creator Music can be used without paying the author or artist up front.
YouTubers who have long complained about copyright difficulties from overzealous music companies resulting in takedowns and loss of money may finally have an answer thanks to the shift. The goal of the tool, according to a blog post from YouTube, is to “create a bridge between the music business and producers on our platform.”