YouTube’s “Analytics for Artists” now includes fan-uploaded short films to encourage artists to use short videos, attracting fans to their full content.
YouTube has announced the expansion of its “Analytics for Artists” metric, adding data related to YouTube Shorts to the “Total Reach” metric, which gives artists and their teams an overview of how their music reaches audiences on the platform. Previously, the “Total Reach” metric included only official content uploaded by an artist and long videos uploaded by fans.
According to Lior Cohen, global head of YouTube’s music department, in January alone, fan-created short films increased the audience of unique viewers by an average of more than 80%. In addition, artists who actively use Shorts, on average, more than 50% of new subscribers to their channel come directly from their Shorts messages.
“Shorts are an appetizer to the main course. They are the starting point for fans to discover the full depth of the artist’s catalog, including music videos, interviews, live performances, lyrical videos and more,” says Cohen.
“Watch how Rema and Selena Gomez win big using all the video formats available on YouTube. After they surpassed 60 million unique viewers of their official music videos and short films for “Calm Down”, fans uploaded short films with their track, raising the audience to a new level: in January, the number of unique viewers increased by more than 500%.
Cohen also notes that artist Oliver Tree uploaded 20 short films and four long videos related to his song “Miss You”, which increased the monthly audience of his channel from six million to 75 million in just four months. Users, in turn, collected another 1.8 billion views in January by uploading short films with this song.
The inclusion of YouTube Shorts data in the Total Reach metric encourages more artists to use Shorts to promote their music, which leads to more daily views of Shorts and attracting more fans through short content to the artist’s full content.
Last month, Google reported that more than 1.5 billion registered users view YouTube Shorts monthly, which averages more than 50 billion views per day. Facebook Instagram and Facebook Reels have gained 140 billion daily views on both platforms, although this is an important milestone, it still pales in comparison to Meta’s report that Instagram and Facebook Reels have gained 140 billion daily views on both platforms.
