YouTube Says Its TikTok Rival Is a Hit With Musicians

tech.hindustantimes.com:

Pop singer JVKE has been posting short clips of himself dancing and clowning around on YouTube’s Shorts video platform for more than a year. In one, he sings into a soda bottle. In another, he pretends to show what to do if you catch your girlfriend cheating on you. Spoiler alert: It involves writing a new song.

All the screen time is paying off. The singer, who got his start posting clips on TikTok, now has over 1.8 million subscribers on YouTube, more than two-thirds of them added this year. YouTube, a division of Alphabet Inc.’s Google unit, wants more musicians to make short-form videos for its platform.

In data shared exclusively with Bloomberg, the YouTube said artists are using Shorts, its TikTok competitor, to rapidly grow their subscribers. In addition to JVKE, others benefiting from the product include singers Madilyn Bailey, Cooper Alan and Emeline, who increased their subscriber counts by 480,000, 290,000 and 150,000, respectively.

“It is a very important opportunity that both the fans and the artists have,” Lyor Cohen, YouTube’s global head of music, said in an interview.

Cohen is excited about the music industry’s opportunity in the short-form space, though he’s also “deeply concerned” some viewers might only watch short-form content without exploring an artist’s deeper, longer-form work, like music videos and interviews. He called short-form videos that don’t link to long-form content “junk food.”

“I think short-form video could help crowdsource and make it easier for kids to find the soundtrack of their youth, but then you have to be prompted, and it has to lead you [to long-form content], so it’s not empty calories, but it leads you to learning and discovering and becoming a fan,” Cohen said.

YouTube