YouTube harkens back to original Instagram with photo post update

When you open up the YouTube Shorts app, you might not expect to see many photo posts in your feed, but YouTube wants to make those still images more common. An update to photo posts will bring snippets of licensed pop music to those pieces of content.

Photos are one of the formats that originally cropped up on YouTube’s Community tab. These days, those non-video uploads are collected under the name YouTube Posts.

As YouTube has looked for a new home for Posts, it has quietly inserted still images into the Shorts feed. Earlier this year, some Shorts users started seeing Carousels that included up to ten images. Creators could write text captions for those pics and add a soundtrack via the royalty-free YouTube Audio Library or the AI-powered Dream Track.

To make photo posts even more enticing for creators, YouTube is adding another audio option: “licensed and popular music.” To stop photo posts from turning into listening parties, YouTube is limiting creators to 15 seconds of licensed music.

“We recently shared that image posts, including carousels, can now appear in the Shorts feed to help your audience connect with you in a new place,” reads a YouTube Help forum post attributed to a TeamYouTube member named J.J. “Now, we’re excited to expand our music options to help you tell your story in even more dynamic ways!”

YouTube’s photo posts have a lot in common with the same-named format on TikTok. Those images have turned into a revenue stream thanks to TikTok Shop. YouTube’s images aren’t moneymakers just yet, but the expanded soundtrack options give YouTube Posts an injection of creativity TikTok can’t quite match.

Both YouTube and TikTok, however, have a chance to fill a gap created by Instagram. The app once known for its photos has swung in a different direction, to the point that Instagram Head Adam Mosseri admitted that his team overfocused on video. There are photo-oriented creators who have looked to other platforms since being let down by Instagram.

YouTube is courting those creators, but they’ll have to be eligible for photo posts to take advantage of the new options. More information about YouTube Posts eligibility can be found here.