YouTube’s adding some new options to its Creator Music element, which enables creators to pay for music licensing in-stream, while it’s also adding the capacity to highlight products within live streams on mobile apps.

First off, on Creator Music – with the cost of YouTube’s music licensing beyond the reach of many users, YouTube’s adding a new licensing system that will enable creators to filter license duration alongside price.

That will enable creators to reduce the cost of licensing based on more limited usage, which could provide more opportunity for high-quality music accompaniment within your content.

YouTube’s also added some new icons within the Creator Music listings to indicate which tracks are available for revenue sharing.

The additions will provide more cost management capacity within this element, which could make YouTube’s commercial music options more available to more users.

YouTube’s also looking to add improved Shorts analytics, via a new Data Story element that will specifically highlight how Shorts content is contributing to channel growth.

YouTube launched Data Stories last October, which are full-screen cards that highlight important analytics elements.

YouTube’s gradually been expanding these cards to new elements, and now, aligning with the growth of Shorts in the app, it’s keen to also highlight how much Shorts can contribute to overall performance and audience reach.

YouTube’s testing the new Shorts card with selected users, and will release it more widely later in the year.

On another front, YouTube’s also rolling out the ability to create expiring community posts on Android and iOS, which will provide another means to communicate with your channel subscribers.

Expiring posts, which YouTube's been developing over the last year, are displayed in-stream with a notification at the top, identifying when it will disappear.

That could be great for limited time promotions or updates, adding another interactive element to help maximize engagement, without that post remaining in your channel history forever.

Creators are able to keep track of their expired posts in the Community tab, but you can't re-share expired posts after the expiry date.

Finally, YouTube’s also adding the capacity to tag and pin products within live streams via the mobile app.

Up till now, creators have only been able to pin products to live streams via Live Control Room on desktop, but now, creators will have more capacity to manage live shopping elements on mobile devices as well.

Like all platforms, YouTube hasn’t seen huge interest in its live shopping options as yet, but it’s still hopeful that this will catch on, and become a bigger element, facilitating broader monetization potential for the platform and for creators.

YouTube also announced scheduled product drops for live streams earlier this month.

Some interesting updates, which could have a range of valuable applications for many brands. You can learn more about YouTube’s latest announcements here.