YouTube is giving its TikTok competitor YouTube Shorts an injection of cash to better compete with its peers. The company today launched the YouTube Shorts Fund, a $ 100 million fund that will pay YouTube Shorts creators for their most watched and engaging content over the course of 2021 and 2022. However, creators cannot apply for the fund to help with content creation. Instead, every month YouTube will reach out to the developers whose videos have passed certain milestones to reward them for their contributions.
The company expects to distribute money to “thousands” of developers every month, it says. And these creators don’t have to join the YouTube affiliate program to qualify. Anyone can get rewards by creating original content for YouTube short films.
YouTube declined to release more specific details about the fund’s operations at this point, including how the creators will be verified or what specific thresholds for receiving payments YouTube has in mind. It also wouldn’t include details on whether YouTube creators could get multiple payments in the same payment period if they had multiple videos that would qualify or other details.
While the company emphasized that only “original” content would be rewarded, it was not made clear how to verify that the content has not yet been uploaded to another platform such as Reels, Snapchat or TikTok.
Credit: Youtube
Instead, YouTube said more details on payments and qualifications would be available closer to the fund’s launch, which is expected sometime in the next few months. It has also been advised that it has paid out over $ 30 billion to creators, artists and media companies over the past three years, and it anticipates the new fund will help set up a long-term monetization model for shorts in the future Build YouTube.
YouTube isn’t the only platform facing the TikTok threat by throwing money on the problem.
Snapchat paid $ 1 million per day for the developers for their top performing videos on Spotlight, its own TikTok clone that left its mark on several millionaires. Meanwhile, Facebook’s Instagram made lucrative offers to top TikTok stars to use its new service Reels. The WSJ reported last year.
Despite the scale of these efforts, TikTok’s own Creator Fund remains a competitive force. It announced The fund would grow to over $ 1 billion in the US over the next three years and more than double that globally. This March too added Another requirement for receiving payments from the fund, including at least 100,000 authentic views in the last 30 days – a signal that the bar is being raised even higher in the face of current success.
In addition to debuting the YouTube Shorts Fund, the company also found it was expanding its shorts player feature on YouTube to make it easier for viewers to discover this short-form video content, test ads for shorts, and make the new “Remix” bring out audio “functionality for all shorts creators.
Credit: Youtube
This somewhat controversial feature makes it possible for the designers of shorts Sample sounds from other YouTube videos for use in their short films instead of just using song clips or original audio. Some YouTube creators were surprised Finding the function was disabled by default. This means the content on YouTube short films can be used unless you have taken the time to disable this setting or remove your video from YouTube.
Since its inception, YouTube has also introduced other features for shorts, including support for subtitles, the ability to record up to 60 seconds with the shorts camera, and the ability to add clips from your phone’s gallery to yours recorded with the shorts camera Add recordings. and the ability to use basic filters to color correct videos. YouTube says there will be more effects in the future.
But even as YouTube tries to catch up with TikTok in terms of feature sets, TikTok has expanded its own palette of effects and has become more YouTube-like by supporting longer videos. Some TikTok developers, for example were recently given the ability Record videos that are 3 minutes long instead of 60 seconds.
YouTube says the new fund will be launched in the coming months and will listen to feedback from the developer community to develop a long-term program for YouTube Shorts.
