YouTube Music Videos in Shorts

Photo Credit: YouTube

YouTube introduces the ability for users to ‘remix’ a music video into their short-form videos, as the company continues to develop features to challenge TikTok.

As YouTube and TikTok continue their strange dance that sees the two video platforms becoming one another to remain competitive, YouTube has introduced the ability for users to “remix” a music video — something of which YouTube’s library is vast compared to TikTok — into their Shorts. That move is made even more significant coming on the heels of Universal Music Group’s plans to pull its catalog from TikTok; YouTube flexing its music muscles could come as an added blow.

To integrate a music video on YouTube into a Short, users can visit any music video on YouTube (well, as long as an artist or label hasn’t opted out of the feature) that they want to use and tap the “Remix” button. From there, users have a few tools at their disposal:

  • The “Collab” tool enables you to display the music video alongside your own — useful for creating dance videos where choreography takes center stage.
  • The “Green Screen” tools lets users set the music video as the background to their own video, which is ideal for the ever-popular reaction video format.
  • With the “Cut” tool, users can take a five-second clip of a music video and add it to their Short.
  • The “Sound” tool takes the audio from a music video for users to incorporate into their Short.

“On YouTube, you can watch the music video on repeat, check out other Shorts that have been created from the same song by fellow fans, and discover deep catalog cuts from your favorite artists and relive those moments by remixing them as your own,” says Sarah Ali, Senior Director of Product Management at YouTube. “All of that can happen in one place, and it’s only on YouTube.”

The new feature undoubtedly gives YouTube an edge over its competitors — namely TikTok, and Meta’s Reels — with a vast catalog of music at its disposal that its rivals simply do not possess. That said, although Google recently announced that YouTube Shorts had crossed the 70 billion daily views threshold, it still pales in comparison to TikTok in the realm of short-form video, where the ByteDance-owned platform still reigns supreme.