YouTube Just Killed Music Ad Revenue Sharing

Many of you probably weren’t even aware of this unless you run a lot of Shorts, but music ad revenue sharing has been one of the most overpowered ways to basically double your Shorts revenue—until now.

Here’s how it worked: When you used music (added through mobile) from certain companies in your Shorts, they shared a cut of their ad revenue with you. It was a game-changer.

I’m a large Shorts creator, averaging 100M views a month, and in November, I was just shy of 200M views. My RPM from YPP was around $0.24, but with music ad revenue sharing, I was making an extra $0.24-$0.26 per 1,000 views, effectively doubling my earnings. I knew it was too good to last, so I even tested other channels without YPP, and the results were life-changing.

But now, YouTube has killed it. As of March 1st, the extra RPM from music ad sharing has dropped to just $0.07. Still a decent boost, but nowhere near the insane numbers we were getting before.

Did anyone else take advantage of this? It’s still an extra source of income but dang was it juicy.

Edit: They drastically reduced the money shared with smaller music companies and sided with large companies which DO NOT share revenue with creators— of course.