YouTube is doubling the amount of viewing a new creator must generate before they can start earning a share of the platform’s advertising and subscription money.
From February 1, 2027, new applicants to the YouTube Partner Program (YPP) will need 8,000 qualified watch hours over the previous 365 days, or 20 million qualified Shorts views over the previous 90 days.
Both figures are double the current entry requirements of 4,000 watch hours and 10 million Shorts views. The 1,000-subscriber requirement is unchanged.
The changes were announced by YouTube in a blog post on Monday (August 10).
“With over 3 million creators in the program, we’re making the first significant changes since 2018 to ensure that YPP continues to be the leader in the creator economy by meaningfully rewarding active creators,” said YouTube.
“In fact, we expect to pay even more to creators in 2027 than we did in 2026.”
YouTube framed the higher entry bar as a function of its own scale, citing more than 200 billion daily Shorts views and over a billion hours of daily watch time on TV.
Creators already in YPP are not affected by the new entry thresholds, YouTube said.
New applicants are, and that marks a shift in direction for a company that has spent the past four years widening access to YPP.
At its Made On YouTube event in September 2022, YouTube said it would open YPP to Shorts-focused creators on a threshold of 1,000 subscribers and 10 million Shorts views over 90 days, and add a lower tier of the program offering earlier access to fan funding tools.
Those lower thresholds are unchanged: 500 subscribers and three public uploads in the last 90 days, plus either 3,000 valid public watch hours in a year or 3 million valid public Shorts views in 90 days.
YouTube is also introducing a minimum performance level for Shorts earnings.
From February 1, 2027, every channel in YPP will need 10 million qualified Shorts views over the previous 90 days to be eligible for ads and subscription revenue sharing on Shorts.
Channels below that line stay in YPP and continue to earn on long-form content, with Shorts revenue sharing resuming automatically once they cross 10 million views again.
“We’re updating how we distribute Shorts revenue to reward creators who drive conversation and engagement on YouTube,” the company said.
“Creators who already earn significant revenue from Shorts are unlikely to be impacted by these changes.”
The logic of a minimum performance bar will be familiar to anyone who followed Spotify‘s royalty model overhaul.
Tracks on Spotify must be streamed at least 1,000 times in the previous 12 months to be counted in the platform’s recorded music royalty pool, alongside an undisclosed minimum number of unique listeners.
That policy went live on April 1, 2024, with Spotify saying at the time that 99.5% of all streams on its service were already of tracks above the threshold, and that each of those tracks would earn more as a result.
The other half of YouTube‘s announcement concerns subscriptions.
The company is expanding Premium Lite to every country where YouTube Premium is sold.
Premium Lite costs USD $8.99 a month in the US, against USD $15.99 for a full Premium individual plan.
“Creators earn money from these subscriptions through a dedicated pool of revenue for each subscription type: 30% of the net subscription revenue for Premium and 60% for Premium Lite,” said YouTube.
“This allocation factors in the costs of operating and promoting the service, including amounts we pay to music partners.”
Each pool is then distributed according to member watch time and views, with creators keeping 55% for long-form videos and 45% for Shorts.
Premium Lite is the tier that pays for the least music.
Ads may still run on music content, on Shorts, and across search and browse, according to YouTube‘s Help Center.
That page glosses music content as covering official and premium music videos, Art Tracks, children’s songs, and user-generated content carrying material from YouTube‘s music partners — covers, dance videos, and vlogs with a popular song playing underneath.
Premium Lite does not include YouTube Music Premium at all.
Read alongside the line about amounts paid to music partners, that points to an explanation for the gap between the two pools: the Premium Lite pool can be set at twice the rate because there is less music being paid for out of it.
YouTube does not say that, and its post does not address what the expansion means for payments to music rightsholders.
Nor are rightsholders shut out of the tier: the ads that keep running against music content on Premium Lite generate revenue that is shared with them.
But the version of YouTube Premium now reaching every Premium market is the cheap one, and the one in which music sits largely outside the subscription.
What YouTube does say is that more subscribers means more money for creators.
“With these additional subscribers, creators can expect higher earnings: when a user signs up for Premium, partners, on average, earn more than when the user was watching ads,” said YouTube, citing 2026 performance.
YouTube paid the music industry more than USD $8 billion in the 12 months to the end of June 2025, according to Global Head of Music Lyor Cohen, who attributed the figure to the platform’s twin-engine model of advertising and subscriptions.
For channels below the 10 million Shorts view line, YouTube says it will introduce bonuses for YouTube Shopping, incentives for brand deals, and earnings boosts for starting and growing trends.
“We’re broadening revenue opportunities for creators to reward growth, engagement, and more by introducing new incentive programs, rather than relying solely on ad revenue,” said YouTube, which added that it will share more details soon.
The new terms, which creators can review and sign in YouTube Studio, take effect on February 1, 2027.Music Business Worldwide
