Google's video platform YouTube is sharply raising the standards that each account must meet to generate revenue.
On the 10th (local time), YouTube said it will apply its "YouTube Partner Program (YPP)" starting in Feb. next year, raising the requirements under which creators (video producers) with an account can share revenue from ads and subscriptions to 8,000 hours of watch time in the past year or 20 million valid Shorts (short-form video) views in the past 90 days.
This doubles the revenue-sharing thresholds from the previous 4,000 hours of watch time or 10 million Shorts views in 90 days. The subscriber requirement remains 1,000, as before.
The new standards will apply to new creators joining YPP, and creators already in YPP will not be affected.
With this measure, it is expected to become harder for new creators to make revenue on YouTube. The burden is likely to grow especially for creators who produce Shorts.
YouTube said, "On YouTube now, daily Shorts views exceed 20 billion, and daily TV watch time tops 1 billion hours," explaining that it overhauled the system to match the platform's growth pace. It added, "Through this, next year we expect to pay creators more revenue than this year."
In addition, YouTube announced it will expand "Premium Lite," a lower-priced product that removes some features such as YouTube Music from the paid subscription plan "YouTube Premium," to all countries where YouTube Premium is available.
As with the existing YouTube Premium, creators will receive a share of subscription revenue when users who subscribe to Premium Lite watch their videos. YouTube decided to distribute 30% of net subscription revenue from the "Premium" plan and 60% of net subscription revenue from "Premium Lite" to creators.
It is the first time in about eight years since 2018 that YouTube has overhauled its revenue-sharing policy.
Earlier, X, the social media (SNS) platform led by Tesla CEO Elon Musk, also fully revamped its creator revenue-sharing program over the weekend. It decided to reward only "original content" that creators produce themselves, not posts that reuse other people's content.
Meta, Facebook's parent company, also introduced a program in Mar. this year that pays $3,000 a month (about 4.5 million won) to lure influential creators from Instagram, TikTok and YouTube to Facebook.