Google has announced that YouTube is rolling out a new feature, called “On The Rise”, meant to highlight new talent and rising stars on the platform. The feature will manifest as a tweak to YouTube’s “Trending” heading, but will only show in the United States for now, with no word on when it may hit other places. In this new “On The Rise” section, YouTube will choose two content creators and two musical artists each week to display to the world. While this promotion is meant to help out new talent, it won’t do any good for those with a low subscriber count. You’ll need at least 1,000 subscribers before you can be featured, and there are other selection criteria like view count, average and total watch time, and subscriber growth. Creators who are chosen are featured in the Trending heading for a full day, displaying badges saying “Creator On The Rise” or “Artist On The Rise”.
This new feature, as the name implies, is geared toward getting more publicity for creators who are already beginning to establish a reputation for themselves on YouTube, but may need a bit of a boost. The bar is set somewhat high, with the minimum requirement to be featured being 1,000 subscribers, but most channels that are serious about building an audience or even a business on YouTube and have quality content are normally able to make it to such a number organically. Once a channel has those 1,000 subscribers, the pool is narrowed using the criteria listed above, and then YouTube staff help to make the final pick regarding who gets featured.
YouTube has long been a crowded and crazy place to seek an audience, with many quality content creators languishing in relative obscurity for years on end. This feature seeks to change all of that by diversifying and expanding what it means to become a YouTube star, much like the YouTube Store and YouTube Spaces initiatives have done for bigger names in the past few months. While something as simple and small in scale as featuring two musicians and two video creators for one day each week won’t change the landscape and turn YouTube into a virtual Hollywood overnight, it will help deserving channels to get some exposure, and over time, the smaller channels getting exposure will add up, helping to decrease the share of viewership that the bigger YouTubers enjoy.