Every week, Vikramadithya Shivaram, a Bengaluru-based sexologist, sits down to roadmap the videos he releases on YouTube. “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail,” he says, describing the process of making a video or two every week for his 1,360 (and counting) subscribers.
Called Self-Help Yourself, Shivaram’s channel has videos on psychology, sex education and self-betterment. A day in his life encompasses planning, scripting, shooting, editing and search engine optimisation. “I look at my videos as soldiers,” says Shivaram, 26. “I expect each one of these soldiers to go out and help make an impact on someone’s life.”
Shivaram aims to reach ten million people with his content, as part of a larger dream to better the world while also becoming an internet millionaire. It is a dream made possible by a platform that reaches a quarter of the world’s population every month. This is YouTube’s core creator base. YouTube today is the world’s second most-visited website, after Google. In 14 years, it has become the place for grandmothers to share recipes, for millennials to follow news, for artists to release work, and for advertisers to push brands.
YouTube’s popularity is part of what lets creators like Shivaram make a following. And, the audience is there because the content served to them is an ever-expanding buffet. As Saanand Warrier, CEO of digital agency Wirality Media, says, “The best thing about YouTube is that it will always continue to offer more variety of content. Something the other platforms still cannot, at that scale.”
And, YouTube is an essential part of marketing not only because of its specific targeting options, but also for the scale of its user base. The impact of this scale can be seen in its latest venture: a music streaming service— YouTube Music—which had three million downloads within a week of its launch in India. Competing with the likes of Spotify, Apple Music and Jio Saavn, YouTube aspires to build on subscriber-only content and industry partnerships.
“The beauty of YouTube is that there is freedom of opportunity, and anyone can build an audience,” Satya Raghavan, director of YouTube’s content partnerships, tells THE WEEK. “Because of that, we are partnering with everyone from rising stars to the most popular names on YouTube.” Music, according to YouTube’s official blog, is the reason half the site’s visitors come to the platform. But, the idea of working with brands and industry is not new, adds Raghavan. “Our goal is to further boost the ecosystem and supercharge the growth.”
YouTube’s earlier music presence is best described as ‘on-demand ad supported’ music—basically, music you listen to for free that nets revenue through advertising. The jump to a premium streaming subscription model allows it to offer an ad-free experience, the ability to play music from YouTube with the screen off, an algorithm customised to your tastes, and a huge library of professional as well as amateur music.
YouTube now has original shows running into multiple seasons, studio spaces set up across the world to encourage creators, and occasionally, even live streaming deals with sports events like the Indian Premier League or Major League Baseball. The challenge is getting users to pay for content. As Warrier says, “I think it will take a while for the users to actually look at YouTube as a subscription platform.”
It is a view YouTube seems to reflect, as the company recently announced that all of its original streaming content would be made ad-supported and available for free from this year onwards.
Without paying subscribers, the problem for both YouTube and its creators is that advertiser-support is no certainty. Creators have been seeing ad revenues drop after their videos were flagged for content that advertisers did not want to associate with. YouTube’s parent company, Alphabet, lost more than $70 billion in stock value on April 29 after it announced a slower rate of ad revenue growth than before.
Raghavan is confident of the platform’s growth in India. “Today, more than 1,200 creators in India have crossed the million subscriber threshold,” he says. “Just five years ago, there were only two creators in India who had this kind of reach. They are sharing content we could not even have imagined a decade ago.”
It is all down to the creators, and as Warrier says, “I think YouTube has nurtured a DIY culture among today’s youth, which, I think, is the biggest credit I can give to the platform.”