Only on YouTube

Sep 20, 2022 - Lyor's Letter

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