Lyor Cohen, American record executive and entrepreneur, announced some news in his newsletter to the music industry. Specifically the expansion of Analytics for artists, which from now on will integrate the data relating to into the “Full coverage” function YouTube Shorts. This will give artists and their teams a complete picture of how their music is reaching audiences on YouTube. Full reach includes not only videos uploaded to their official channels but also those created and shared by fans, trendsetters and contributors.
Lyor Cohen’s YouTube Shorts data newsletter
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Did you notice that the Shorts doubled your audience?!?!
I have news for you: Shorts fans are the new digital street team.
Last January, the Shorts created by fans increased the average audience of artists by more than 80% (we are talking about unique viewers). This means that on Shorts, fans are ALMOST DOUBLING the total reach of artists, so they can spend more time doing what they do best: making good music.
And fans not only help increase an artist’s total reach by using their music as the soundtrack to their hobbies, daily adventures and so much more… They BECOME DOUBLE FANS IN TURN by interacting with the Shorts created by the artists themselves. The comeback and success for those who load Shorts is amazing. Indeed, in January 2023, artists using Shorts1 averaged over 50% new subscribers to their channel, as a result of content posted on Shorts.
As the growth of the Shorts has been impressive (50 billion daily views as of December 2022)I will keep repeating that they are the entry point to discover an artist at 360°: from music videos, interviews and live performances, to lyrics and much more.
It’s not me saying it… Take Rema and Selena Gomez: they’ve achieved incredible success using all the video formats available on YouTube. After surpassing 60 million unique views of their official music video and Shorts’ single Calm Down, fans uploaded Shorts singing their song in it, taking the number of views to the next level: 350 million new unique views in January, with an increase of over +500%. Extraordinary!
Let’s also take Oliver Tree, who after the viral success of the song Miss You, has taken enormous advantage of the different video formats available on YouTube, uploading 20 Shorts and 4 long-form videos linked to the single. Eventually, his channel’s monthly users went from 6 million to 75 million in just over 4 months. Furthermore, in January his fans uploaded numerous Shorts based on the song, thus reaching 1.8 billion total views. Discover Here’s how to make the most of Shorts.
A multi-format environment needs multi-format standards of success: that’s why we’re redefining what reach means for artists on YouTube. Starting this month, the “Analytics for Artists” metrics for calculating total reach include fan-uploaded Shorts (as well as official artist content and long-form fan-posted videos). This new metric shows how many people music can reach across all formats. Basically, it provides a real snapshot – as detailed and complete as possible – of the size of an artist’s audience on YouTube. We’ve also created the new “Songs” section in Analytics to help artists understand how fans are listening to or creating their music using different video formats.
Only on YouTube can fans turn up the volume, whether it’s long-form videos, livestreams, Shorts and more – Every day we work to make YouTube the best place for all music fans.
With love and respect,
lyor