YouTube will soon let you earn revenue from copyrighted music on YouTube Shorts


Because money is still far stronger than copyright. A measure to defeat TikTok. Will it succeed?

YouTube is now adding a feature to have its content creators use copyrighted music and still gain revenue. This move is a response to the juggernaut that is TikTok, where its revenue model is similar to YouTube’s planned implementation.

This is part of the YouTube Partner Program that pays certain YouTubers revenue if they have at least 1000 subscribers and over 4000 hours watch time. So get to doing that 1-hour podcast no one wants to listen to. The program initiated back in 2007.

The company has paid USD 50 billion to creators worldwide excluding their works with YouTube shorts and the company wants to address this. So, they launched a fund called “Shorts Fund” which does the same objective as the partner program but for YouTube shorts.

Starting next year, YouTubers will be able to earn revenue even while using copyrighted music so long as it is in YouTube Shorts. This feature is called “Creator Music”. Creators who don’t want to pay for licenses can share their ad revenue with the copyright holder. The criteria do not change for long-form videos, however.

“Shorts-focused” content creators will be eligible for monetization if they have at least 1000 subscribers and they have attained 10 million Shorts views within 90 days.

Don’t dispose of that royalty-free music in the dustbin yet. You’re still going to need it if you plan to make videos longer than a minute, which is frankly, very much likely.

Creators will gain 45% of total revenue which is shared based on their total Shorts views.

Source: MSNBC, YouTube