Youtube Will Pay $100M To Creators On Its New Shorts Platform

Youtube is becoming the latest video platform to court artists and influencers with a dedicated fund. The company has announced that it will hand out $100 million between this year and next to creators on its new Shorts platform.

Shorts is essentially Youtube’s answer to Tiktok: a new in-app function lets users create videos of up to 60 seconds using their phone camera. They can string multiple clips together and sample soundtracks from other Shorts (and, soon, from any Youtube video). Viewers swipe between the videos like on Tiktok.

The platform was unveiled last September and started rolling out in beta form to U.S. users in March. It is now available to everyone in the U.S. and India. Shorts videos are garnering 6.5 billion daily views globally, according to the company.

The fund is open to anyone who creates original content on the platform (and adheres to community guidelines). Youtube says it will “reach out to thousands of creators whose Shorts received the most engagement and views to reward them for their contributions.” It is unclear exactly when the fund will start or what metrics will be used to dole out the money — Youtube will use feedback from users to develop the program.

Cartoon Brew has contacted Youtube’s parent Google by email to ask about the scope for creating animated content on the Shorts platform. This article will be updated if the company replies.

Tiktok launched its Creator Fund last year. The money available for U.S. creators started at $200M, with the company promising to grow it to over $1B within three years. To be eligible, users need at least 100,000 authentic video views within the last 30 days.

Snapchat has also entered this space with guns blazing. It pays out $1M every day to creators on its own Tiktok clone, Spotlight. Meanwhile, The Wall Street Journal has reported that Facebook’s Instagram approached popular Tiktok creators with “lucrative offers” to use its Reels platform which, again, apes Tiktok.