YouTube’s announced a new generative AI element as part of its weekly feature update, while it’s also adding new live-stream notification within the Shorts feed.
First off, YouTube’s expanding its generative AI music project, with its “Dream Track” experiment now including an AI remix option for a selection of tracks.
“If you’re a creator in the experiment group, you can select an eligible song, describe how you want to restyle it, then generate a unique 30-second soundtrack to use in your Short. For example, if you want to give a song a different genre or mood, you simply enter your vision into the ‘Restyle a track’ prompt and you’ll soon have a customized soundtrack that reimagines the music while maintaining the essence of the original song’s vocals and lyrics.”
This is the latest in YouTube’s effort to integrate more music options in partnership with musicians and publishers, which is why only select tracks are included in the option. But it could open up new doors for artists, by putting a different spin on their tracks, while still providing attribution back to the original. An infinite number of remixes will definitely get more people listening, which might also make music a more engaging, interactive option in the app.
YouTube says that this new experiment is only available to “a small group of creators” at present, while Dream Track itself was made available to all U.S. creators last month.
YouTube’s also rolling out a new option that will enable creators who post both Shorts and live-streams to include reminders of their upcoming streams within the Shorts feed.
I say “include” not “add” or “share” in this context, because you don’t get a lot of post control here.
“To ensure that this stream reminder option appears on your Shorts, just schedule a stream and Shorts viewers will see a reminder option within 24hrs of a stream starting. We hope this helps Shorts viewers join in on even more of your upcoming live streams.”
So if you have a live-stream scheduled, your Shorts viewers will now see a reminder option a day before the stream. It could be a handy way to raise awareness of your broader YouTube presence, and given the popularity of Shorts, it may also help to drive a lot more viewers to your broadcasts.
Finally, YouTube’s also provided yet another update on its announced conversion of all 3 minute or shorter video uploads to Shorts.
Last month, YouTube announced that all videos of 3 minutes duration or less would soon be eligible to appear in the Shorts feed, but it’s since had to provide various clarifications on what this actually means in practice.
To clarify:
- Vertical videos between 1 to 3 minutes in length that were uploaded to YouTube prior to October 15th will not be eligible for the Shorts feed, or be listed as Shorts.
- Videos of 3 minutes or less published after this date will be listed as Shorts, and will be eligible to be shown in the Shorts stream.
YouTube’s now in the process of enacting this, so this conversion is not happening for all creators as yet, adding to the confusion. But basically, this is the current ruling provided by YouTube, and if you’re not seeing this reflected on your channel content, it will be happening soon.
YouTube says that it currently expects the full, platform-wide Shorts conversion process to be in place by early next month.
Interesting updates, as always, which aren’t “game changers” as such, but will be of relative value and importance for some creators.
