YouTube introduced a new feature that allows content creators to add and remix music videos in their Short.
As reported in the post announcing the implementation, YouTube explains how it will be possible to use music videos from artists such as Beyoncé e Maggie Rogers. This move does not seem at all random: just at the beginning of February, in fact, TikTok had quite a contrast with the Universal Music Group (A G), effectively losing the rights of the artists who rely on this label.
TikTok and UMG found themselves at loggerheads over the failure to renew the licensewith an offer from the social network deemed absolutely inadequate by the second party in question.
In fact, from that moment on, users of the Chinese platform no longer had access to a large catalog of music tracks. In fact, YouTube seems to have entered this fight and instead gained access to UMG content.
YouTube Shorts, TikTok and UMG: an increasingly interesting challenge
All this, combined with the fact that TikTok does not currently offer the possibility of remixing music videos, makes the challenge between the two platforms even more compelling.
Curiously, if YouTube tries to focus on short content, the competing platform seems to intend to move in the opposite way. Recently, in fact, TikTok has tried to push videos with prolonged duration.
The new remix feature gives creators the ability to make a Short with a particular music video, add the video itself as a background and/or use the audio from it. To access the feature, users need to select the button remix directly onto a music video and choose how they want to interact with it.
The dispute between YouTube Shorts and TikTok certainly didn’t start with music video remixes and disagreements with UMG. In fact, already last November, YouTube had introduced a system based onIA to create music.