As the vertical video movement continues, YouTube Shorts has once again emerged victorious over TikTok.
Amid its ongoing war with Universal Music Group, the app has fallen into an eerie silence. Sure, there’s indie music and the odd royalty-free fan cam, but it’s hard to go viral if you’re unable to access roughly a third of the world’s music Still, if the UMG is killing TikTok, then YouTube Shorts is the rodent nibbling away at the app’s corpse for sustenance.
In a blog post announcing the change, YouTube explained how it works: tap ‘Remix’ on your chosen music video and you’ll be presented with four options: Sound, Collab, Green Screen and Cut. The ‘Sound’ button will enable you to take the sound from the video and use it in your Short, while Collab effectively works as YouTube Shorts’ equivalent to TikTok’s Duet feature, allowing you to make a video side by side with the artist.
The ‘Green Screen’ option in turn is pretty self-explanatory, while the ‘cut’ button will allow you to extract a 5-second clip from the video and add it to your own Short.
“What makes this so unique?” the blog continues, “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. All of that can happen in one place and it’s ONLY on YouTube!”
Ouch. Someone should ask TikTok if it wants any ice for that burn. You have to respect the opportunism, if nothing else.
