YouTube’s new short-form video format ‘Shorts’, has made its official beta launch in the US.
In YouTube’s answer to TikTok, ‘Shorts’ allows users to make videos up to 60 seconds long. The platform has made deals with a number of record companies, including Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, Warner Music Group and more, meaning users have access to a massive discography of songs.
Users will scroll through a page of curated short videos, search hashtags and subscribe to creators. The process of putting together a Short is similar to TikTok’s – users can create short segments within a video, choose background music or sounds and use a range of editing features.
Rather than its own app, though, Shorts will exist within the existing YouTube homepage. This also means that if a user subscribes to a creator’s Shorts, they will also subscribe to their long-form, traditional YouTube videos as well, and vice versa.
According to YouTube, there are plans to allow any YouTube audio to be remixed in a Short (creators can opt-out if they don’t want their audio used).
The app has already been beta-tested in India (which banned TikTok in 2020) for a number of months.
