YouTube on December 21 introduced two new features in India, designed to boost content discovery and open up new monetization opportunities for creators on the platform.
YouTube said the new Podcasts feature, which is being gradually rolled out to all listeners in India, will help creators and artists to showcase their podcasts on YouTube and YouTube Music.
The company is rolling out podcast shelves on the YouTube Music homepage to help improve discovery for listeners and increase engagement for creators and while new features in YouTube Studio make it easier to publish podcasts.
This move comes at a time when Google is positioning YouTube Music as a centralised podcast destination ahead of the impending shutdown of Google Podcasts in April 2024.
"With podcasts available for on-demand, offline and background listening on YouTube Music in India, it unlocks the opportunity to earn more on the platform via ads and subscriptions" the company said in a blogpost.
YouTube is also extending its branded content platform YouTube BrandConnect to India, making it easier for creators, top brands, and leading agencies to partner, create, promote, and measure sponsored creator content. The Google-owned platform is being rolled out to eligible creators and select advertisers in India, it said.
"This will help brands execute their branded content campaigns more seamlessly by identifying the right mix and profile of creators to work with, while creators will have a new avenue to be discovered and earn more from their content" the blogpost read.
YouTube recently completed 15 years in India and counts the country as one of its biggest markets with over 400 million monthly users.
YouTube's expanding base of creative entrepreneurs contributed over Rs 16,000 crore to the Indian GDP in 2022 and supported the equivalent of 7,50,000 full-time jobs in the country, according to a recent consulting firm Oxford Economics.
In September 2023, YouTube unveiled a suite of generative artificial intelligence (AI) products and tools targeted at creators.
This includes the ability to create AI-generated video or image backgrounds for their short videos by just typing an idea into a prompt, helping creators come up with new video ideas, find music tracks for their videos and reach new audiences through features such as automatic dubbing.
YouTube is also allowing select Shorts creators in the United States to make original music snippets with AI-generated vocals from prominent artistes as part of a new experimental feature called Dream Track.
"We will continue to invest in building the future of YouTube – where technology empowers imagination, where every dream finds its voice, and every story finds its audience," the company said in the blog post.
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