YouTube announced in February that its TikTok-style video format Shorts would be coming to the United States. On Thursday, March 18, 2021, YouTube Shorts officially launched a beta version of its app in the country. The new short-form video offering is expected to be expanded over the next few weeks.
YouTube Shorts is the short-video offering by the company. The service aims to rival TikTok with its offerings as it lets users record vertical clips on a mobile format. According to the tech company, the feature gives users the ability to “shoot short, catchy videos using nothing but their mobile phones.”
In many ways, the new feature unveiled by YouTube mimics the features already released by TikTok. These include a multi-segment camera feature that lets users put clips together, an extensive selection of music tracks, as well as a captioning tool, allowing users to create a video that is 60 seconds or less.
The wide range of popular and highly in-demand music stems from YouTube deals and partnerships with numerous companies with more than 250 publishers and labels in the industry, notes Tech Crunch.
Its agreements include the likes of Warner Music Group, Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, Warner Chappell Music, 300 Entertainment, Kobalt, Merline, Beggars, Empire, Peer, CD Baby, OneRPM, Reservoir, and many other companies.
Apart from the aforementioned features, users will also have control over their desired speed settings, colors, filters, and more.
Fox Business states that in the coming months, the company will be adding more features to its roster, including the capacity to add text to particular areas of the video. Moreover, the news site also states that it will also look into incorporating other sample audio from other clips or content creators to create a remixed version.
Prior to launching the beta version in the United States, CNN reports that the media technology company only launched this feature to users in India.
On a global scale, CNN states that users have access to viewing short-form videos created on the platform. However, users have yet to gain access to creating content on the product.
In its blog post, YouTube said that its Indian users have more than tripled since December 2020. To date, the playing feature of Shorts alone has exceeded 6.5 billion views on a daily basis.
The company chose to forego having a separate app. Instead, users can reportedly access Shorts from the YouTube homepage. It will soon launch on the said mobile app, reports tech Crunch.
