Befitting YouTube executive Lyor Cohen‘s background as a top hip-hop manager and record mogul, many of the “Made On YouTube” features announced Tuesday (Sept. 16) at an event in New York are focused on musicians’ needs. Beginning later this year, artists will be able to share behind-the-scenes video content, countdowns for new releases and “thank you” clips to fans, as well as participate in a pilot program for selling exclusive merch to prolific viewers. Plus, they’ll have access to new tools, many involving AI tech developed by YouTube parent Google, to help generate song ideas, video sketches and even entire works.
As part of YouTube’s 20th-anniversary rollout of 30-plus new tools and products, Dua Lipa told Cohen, in an on-stage interview, that her content on the service has helped her be “part of the conversation” and “adds to the closeness and brings more of a familiarity.”
New features on YouTube Shorts, which competes for views with TikTok and Instagram Reels, have clear benefits for artists and musicians. The new “Speech to Song” tool combines snippets of recorded conversation, say, or a verbalized idea for a lyric or poem, with AI-generated musical ideas into what sounds like an actual work. (Many of these features are in the process of rolling out in the U.S., as well as other countries.)
Another feature, Veo 3 Fast, customizes Google DeepMind’s Veo 3 video-generation tool so users can quickly and easily link sound and video clips. The tech allows for lower latency, reducing the buffering period that often occurs between a camera capturing a moment and its display to viewers.
The Veo 3 tool has an AI component, too: Plug in, for example, “punk rock dad,” combined with the original song fragment, and wind up with a custom angry-parent-skateboarding music video. Veo 3 Fast also allows users to borrow motion from existing videos, like a dance or sports move, and apply it to a photo to animate the still image.
Also during the event, YouTube reported that it has 2.7 billion users, landed $60 billion in 2024 media revenue and has paid out $100 billion to content creators since 2021.