A new analytics tool helps musical artists harness YouTube Shorts and its 50 billion daily views

Musicians who are active on YouTube are about to gain access to “the most comprehensive snapshot of the size of an artist’s audience on YouTube.” That’s how YouTube Global Head of Music Lyor Cohen describes Analytics for Artists, a new product that will track viewership across multiple video formats.

Cohen announced Analytics for Artists in a post on the official YouTube blog. The longtime recording industry exec explained that YouTube’s new toolkit is designed to track the rising number of Shorts clips that include popular music. Musicians will be able to analyze their own Shorts while keeping an eye on fan-uploaded Shorts that use their music.

The blog post references artists like Oliver Tree and Selena Gomez, who have promoted new music by uploading auxiliary videos on Shorts. Perhaps the biggest short-form success story, however, is that of Miley Cyrus. The pop icon strung together multiple consecutive weeks atop the charts after her song ‘Flowers’ became a viral smash, appearing in more than 600,000 YouTube Shorts videos. Our U.S. Top 50 chart is now filled with artists who are boosting long-form music videos by appealing to short-form creators.

Cohen shared some stats that show just how big YouTube Shorts has gotten. As of December 2022, the TikTok competitor records 50 billion daily views, many of which come on videos that feature pop music. According to Cohen, the top 1,000 songs on YouTube Shorts got more than 280 billion combined views in January 2023. And the average musician with an active Shorts page now gets 50% of the new subscribers from their short-form uploads.

YouTube’s push into the music world has encountered plenty of bumps over the years, but the platform’s latest approach to the category seems to be sitting well with recording industry executives. In an email to Tubefilter, a YouTube rep shared quotes from music moguls who are pleased with the traffic their clients are getting on Shorts. Atlantic Records EVP of Viral Marketing & Analytics Brian Dackowski made his position clear: “YouTube Shorts has become a key part of our digital strategy this year.”