YouTube has expanded its Analytics for Artists tool by adding YouTube Shorts-related data to the “Total Reach” metric. This means YouTube will now give artists and their teams an overview of how their music is reaching audiences across YouTube, TechCrunch reported. Prior to this expansion, the Total Reach metric only included official content uploaded by the artist and long-form videos uploaded by fans.
In a blog post, Lyor Cohen, YouTube’s global head of Music, said that fan-created Shorts increased the average artist’s audience of unique viewers by more than 80% in January 2023. In addition, artists who are active on Shorts saw more than 50% of their new channel subscribers coming directly from their Shorts posts on average.
The company is also launching a new “Songs” section in its Analytics tool to help artists and their teams see how fans are listening to their music or creating with it, across all video formats. In the new Songs section, artists will see their top songs from the past 28 days and what songs are being most used in Shorts.
“Shorts are the appetizer to the entree,” Cohen wrote. “They are the entry point, leading fans to discover the depth of an artist’s catalog, including music videos, interviews, live performances, lyric videos, and more. Look at Rema & Selena Gomez winning big by leveraging all the video formats available on YouTube. After they surpassed 60 million unique viewers of their official music videos and Shorts for Calm Down, fans uploaded Shorts featuring their track, taking viewership to another level: adding 350 million unique viewers in January, an increase of over
500 per cent.”
