Only on YouTube

What is the biggest thing in music today? Participation. While YouTube has always been a two-way street, engaging your audience with music has become mission critical. Fans and creators are not in the back seat anymore - they’re making music bounce across formats and find new global audiences.

YouTube is home to over two million professional creators¹ who forged a multi-billion dollar economy and attracted passionate audiences. Building new bridges between the world of creators and artists is how we will make 1+1 equal 3. That’s why we announced at our Made on YouTube event that Creator Music is now in beta in the US.

Creator Music is a new destination in YouTube Studio giving creators easy access to an ever growing catalog of music for use in their long-form video. Pop culture moves fast, and creators need quick music clearances to create amazing content that is of the moment. Creators will either pay for the music with an upfront fee, or share a portion of their ad revenue with the music rights-holders. This will be a true game changer for creators, artists, and fans. A win-win-win:

• Unleashing creativity: Creators have said time and time again that they want access to popular music because it inspires them creatively. Music is culture. Creator Music will allow them to add their own flavor to the zeitgeist and create even more amazing content.

• Growing music promotion: Think about it - two million creators is like two million ways to uniquely break your songs with global and diverse audiences. Experiencing a song from the perspective of your favorite creator opens new doors. Take Kyle Hanagami, who, with 4.5 million subscribers, has one of the biggest dance channels on YouTube. Kyle’s viewers are a younger pop audience. And access to that audience is hugely valuable for pop artists who want to share music with those fans. On top of that, using pop music is valuable for Kyle too, because he wants to create content with music his subscribers love. Everyone wins.

• Unlocking revenue: Last week I shared that YouTube contributed $6B to the music industry in 12 months², with 30% of the revenue coming from user generated content (for the second year in a row³). Now, Creator Music will enable the music industry to grow their earnings from YouTube even more by helping creators create more monetizable content.

YouTube’s creators are thriving, and artists are only scratching the surface when it comes to collaborating with them. Artists are under tremendous pressure right now to be “always on,” but not all of them signed up for that. My hope is that by giving creators access to an artist’s music, the artist will unlock more time to focus on what they love: creating music. I look forward to helping 1+1 equal 3 and to witnessing the next soundtrack of YouTube.

One
With love and respect,

• ¹These are creators enrolled in YouTube’s Partner Program, which lets qualifying creators tap into different ways to earn revenue, gives access to 1:1 chat and email support, and allows you to use the Copyright Match Tool.

• ²July 2021-June 2022

• ³UGC drove over 30% of payouts for artists, songwriters, and rights-holders, for the second year in a row (July 2021 to June 2022 vs July 2020 to June 2021)