Photo Credit: YouTube
YouTube’s ‘Analytics for Artists’ now includes fan-uploaded Shorts to encourage artists to utilize short-form videos, drawing fans to their long-form content.
YouTube has announced an expansion to its “Analytics for Artists” metrics, adding YouTube Shorts-related data to the Total Reach metric, giving artists and their teams an overview of how their music reaches audiences across the platform. Previously, the Total Reach metric only included official content uploaded by the artist and long-form videos uploaded by fans.
According to Lyor Cohen, YouTube’s Global Head of Music, fan-created Shorts increased the average artist’s audience of unique viewers by more than 80% in January alone. Additionally, artists who are active on Shorts saw more than 50% of their new channel subscribers coming directly from their Shorts posts on average.
“Shorts are the appetizer to the entrée. They are the entry point, leading fans to discover the depth of an artist’s catalog, including music videos, interviews, live performances, lyric videos, and more,” says Cohen.
“Look at Rema & Selena Gomez winning big by leveraging all the video formats available on YouTube. After they surpassed 60 million unique viewers of their official music videos and Shorts for ‘Calm Down,’ fans uploaded Shorts featuring their track, taking viewership to another level: adding 350 million unique viewers in January, an increase of over 500%.”
Cohen also notes that artist Oliver Tree uploaded 20 Shorts and four long-form videos related to his song “Miss You,” which increased his channel’s monthly viewers from six million to 75 million in just over four months. Users, in turn, brought in another 1.8 billion views in January by uploading Shorts that featured the song.
Incorporating YouTube Shorts data into the Total Reach metric encourages more artists to utilize Shorts to promote their music, leading to more daily views of Shorts and drawing more fans through short-form content to the artist’s long-form content.
Google revealed last month that YouTube Shorts are being watched by more than 1.5 billion logged-in users every month, averaging over 50 billion daily views. While that is a significant milestone, it still pales compared to Meta’s report that Instagram and Facebook Reels have accrued 140 billion daily views across both platforms.