What was announced or recorded
On 14 September 2020, YouTube's own blog described the Shorts beta as a format for expressing yourself 'in 15 seconds or less,' launching first 'in India' with wider availability promised for later months. The post frames the format around a new vertical 'swipe' watch experience, distinguishing the feed itself, not just the clip length, as the product. Payment came later and separately: on 20 September 2022, YouTube stated that revenue sharing on Shorts would begin 'in early 2023,' with creators keeping '45% of the revenue,' split by each creator's share of total Shorts views.
What the documents establish
The two posts, eighteen months apart, separate a feed launch from a payment mechanism the company delayed rather than bundled with the product from day one. The 2022 post sets eligibility as either the standard Partner Programme threshold or a Shorts-specific path requiring '10M Shorts views' within 90 days, with the money pooled monthly from ad revenue and split with music rights holders before creators receive their 45% share. A living reference on Google's current support page, describing the site as retrieved on 16 September 2026, repeats the 45% figure and the 10-million-view, 90-day threshold, and separately states a start date of 1 February 2027 for that same qualifying threshold — language this dossier reports as written rather than interpreted, since the support page does not itself explain how that date relates to the eligibility rule already in force.
Announced versus delivered
What was announced in September 2022 was a start window of 'early 2023,' not a specific day; a commonly repeated date of 1 February 2023 could not be confirmed against an opened YouTube document and is not asserted here. What was delivered, as far as the documents examined show, is a creator-pool mechanism still described in near-identical terms four years later, itself evidence the basic structure held. What remains unresolved is the relationship between the currently stated threshold and the 2027 date on the same support page; flag that as a live discrepancy to check rather than resolve by assumption.
What to watch
Editorially: a revenue-sharing formula announced a year and a half ahead of its start date is a plan, not a delivered payment, and a support page's forward-dated threshold deserves the same scepticism applied to any other announced-but-not-yet-effective policy.
- Does an eligibility threshold quoted today match what was originally announced, or has it been revised since?
- Is a stated percentage a share of gross ad revenue, or of a pool already net of music licensing?
- When a support page names a future effective date, does it explain what changes on that date or only restate the current rule?
YouTube's own record separates the vertical feed's 2020 debut cleanly from its 2022-announced, 2023-scheduled payment plan, and a support page's unexplained 2027 date is exactly the kind of detail this dossier exists to flag rather than smooth into a tidy single timeline.
Sources & evidence
blog.youtube · Official source
Source date: 14 Sept 2020 · Checked: 16 Sept 2026
- Announces the Shorts beta launching in India, its 15-second format and vertical swipe watch experience.
blog.youtube · Official source
Source date: 20 Sept 2022 · Checked: 16 Sept 2026
- States revenue sharing on Shorts begins in early 2023, with creators keeping 45% of allocated revenue, and states eligibility thresholds.
support.google.com · Official source
Source date: Not stated by source · Checked: 16 Sept 2026
- Living support page restating the 45% creator revenue share and the 10-million-view, 90-day eligibility threshold, with a stated 1 February 2027 date attached to that same threshold.