YouTube Shorts' 3 Minutes Expansion: What the New Maximum Length of YouTube Shorts Means for Creators
Jourdan Aldredge
Oct 22, 2024
The battle for short-form video content supremacy is heating up. The story of TikTok’s meteoric rise in short-form popularity, mostly over the pandemic years, was studied closely by rivals like Meta and Google, and now competitors like Instagram Reels, Facebook Reels, and YouTube Shorts are quickly making up ground in the short-form content creation space.
While there will always be some nuance between these platforms, it does feel like they are all basically morphing into one, as any innovation from one platform is quickly copied and adapted by the others.
The latest area to see a change has been the maximum video length of these short-form videos. With TikTok now offering up to 10 minutes for recording and 60 minutes for uploads, YouTube Shorts has just announced that its maximum video length will be expanded to three minutes.
What does this mean for content creators? Let’s explore this news, lay out the latest YouTube Shorts guidelines, and see if we can help any aspiring content creators successfully navigate this ever-changing short-form video space with the best royalty free music, sound effects, and resources at your disposal.
Is the maximum length of YouTube Shorts 3 minutes now?
As of October 15th, 2024, the new maximum length of YouTube Shorts is 3 minutes long.These Longer Shorters, as YouTube is calling them, have been one of the most requested updates to YouTube Shorts since its first release.
According to YouTube, the goal is to further empower content creators to have more flexibility in telling their stories. This change will only apply to videos that are square or taller in aspect ratio and shouldn’t affect any videos uploaded before October 15th.
Why is YouTube making this change?
Now that we’ve covered the big news about the change in YouTube Shorts maximum duration, we can explore a bit more about why YouTube is making this change now. As mentioned at the start, the shortest and best answer here might simply be because of TikTok.
Even as YouTube Shorts grows more popular, it’s far behind TikTok in the short-form content creation space. According to data, these short-form content platforms like TikTok are just as popular as ever. They are becoming increasingly valuable to companies, brands, and promoters as they figure out more ways to engage and monetize the audiences on these apps.
YouTube Shorts has the world’s largest streaming platform behind it, but despite YouTube’s success, it hasn’t quite caught on with younger demographics enough to be truly competitive. While changing the maximum length of a YouTube short won’t instantly change anything, it does signal that YouTube is open to making adjustments and pushing for more viewers.
Tips for creating YouTube Shorts
If you’re a content creator of any type looking to launch a channel and brand today, you’re still going to have many options to consider. Lucky for you—and all content creators—is that you don’t have to pick just one platform.
These days, most people upload their videos to multiple platforms that pay content creators, often all at once.However, because of the small but sometimes significant differences between the platforms, content creators have needed to re-edit their videos to better fit different length rules or other guidelines.
Your best bet, though, might simply be to focus on your content and develop your own unique voice. You can also hone in on just one platform to start, like TikTok, for example, and then expand from there as other platforms, like YouTube Shorts, for example, continue to grow their audience.
Royalty free music for YouTube Shorts
Our other top piece of advice for aspiring content creators out there is to make sure that you’re using royalty free music for your videos. Royalty free music is crucial for all types of content creation as it’s the only type we can guarantee will always be safe for these different platforms.
Unlike lots of popular music and other so-called “copyright free” songs, royalty free music from Soundstripe will always be protected and available to use on YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, and all other social platforms.
If you’d like to check out some of the best royalty free music for YouTube Shorts we have some hand-picked selections to share with you below.
Description: A low-energy, hip-hop song best described as chill and fun. Bass and bass guitar are the primary instruments in this track.
BPM: 84
Key: E Minor
Description: A medium-energy, electronic song best described as reflective and romantic. Synth and bass are the primary instruments in this track.
BPM: 111
Key: A Minor
Description: A medium-energy, electronic song best described as fun and happy. Synth and bass are the primary instruments in this track.
BPM: 120
Key: C Major
Description: A medium-energy, electronic song best described as fun and happy. Bass and bass guitar are the primary instruments in this track.
BPM: 109
Key: B Major
Description: A medium-energy, hip-hop song best described as angry and fun. Bass and synth bass are the primary instruments in this track.
BPM: 150
Key: A Major
You can also find a full article exploring the best royalty free music for YouTube Shorts here. Or, if you’d like to dive into some more tracks right now, here are some additional playlists worth exploring.
Description: A collection of the best vocal Pop tracks from the Soundstripe catalog.
Description: Low-energy Lo-Fi style background music for studying and other deep focus work.
Description: Vlog underscore for your next lifestyle content drop.
And, as always, there are more playlists to choose from in our full Soundstripe music library.
Resources for YouTube Shorts
Finally, to wrap things up, here are some extra articles and resources exploring how royalty free music and copyrights work, as well as some additional tips for working with YouTube in particular.