YouTube reveals new Shorts music stats

We already know that YouTube Shorts are racking up 50bn daily views, with 1.5 billion logged-in viewers a month. But now YouTube has announced three new stats focused on the musical impact of its short-video feature.

They’re big numbers too. First, the company says that the top 1,000 songs on Shorts saw more than 280bn combined views in January 2023 alone.

Second, YouTube says that fan-created Shorts increased the average music artist’s audience of unique viewers by more than 80% that month.

Third, also in January, artists who were ‘active’ on Shorts – defined as posting weekly – saw more than 50% of their new channel subscribers coming from Shorts on average.

To summarise this: music-soundtracked Shorts are being watched a LOT; it’s the fan-made Shorts that are really boosting artists’ reach; and Shorts aren’t just leading to streams for those artists, they’re building followings.