Dance creators believe YouTube left them behind amid its Shorts push

YouTube’s short-form video push has created new opportunities for dance creators to make money on the platform — but some creators believe these changes are too little and too late to reverse the dance community’s exodus to Instagram and TikTok.

Viewership of both short-form and long-form dance videos on YouTube has consistently decreased year-over-year since 2022, according to figures shared with Digiday by Tubular Labs. That year, dance videos received a total of 20.4 billion views; in 2023, dance videos garnered 17.2 billion views; and in 2024, dance viewership on YouTube declined to 14 billion views.

Amid this viewership decrease, YouTube Shorts became the dominant format for dance videos on the platform, with 86 percent of dance video views coming from videos under one minute long in 2024, compared to only 47 percent in 2022. (A YouTube representative declined to comment on this story.)

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