If you’re a band or artist, chances are you have either an Instagram or YouTube presence, if not both. Here we break down a couple of important updates to both platforms when it comes to video streaming.
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Guest post by Bobby Owsinski of Music 3.0
Not everyone has a YouTube channel and not everyone has an Instagram account, but most everyone has one of the two. Here are a couple of small streaming video updates, and chances are you’ll find at least one that’s interesting.
YouTube
First of all, in August YouTube will no longer show exact subscriber counts to your channel. There will still be a number, but it will be rounded off to the lowest hundred. In other words, if you have 5,577 subscribers, YouTube will only display it as 5.5k. YouTube channels with subscribers of less than a thousand will read the exact number.
Now as a creator, you’ll be able to see the exact number, but your subscribers will not. The exact numbers of Likes, views and Dislikes will still be displayed.
Believe it or not, this was all triggered by a recent feud in the beauty community between Tati Westbrook, James Charles, and Jeffree Star, where their subscriber numbers became the story rather than their content (I’m not sure how rounding subscriber numbers down will affect this).
The latest news with Instagram is a lot more relevant, in my opinion. If you like to post videos via IGTV, you now that you’re limited to vertical videos only – until now. IGTV users can now post in landscape. This is something that creators have been asking for since IGTV was launched last year.
The company now even allows creators to upload their prerecorded videos, but still hasn’t introduced a way of monetizing videos, which most creators have pined for.
What’s interesting here is that with Facebook and Instagram now in the game for streaming video, YouTube is getting more competition than ever. Expect more to come as all platforms look for an edge in an effort to get more creators on board.