After 10 years, YouTube is nixing YouTube Rewind, its annual video-recap celebration of creators — saying that one single video can’t reflect “the full breadth” of its creator community.
The Google-owned video giant said Thursday that when it debuted YouTube Rewind in 2011, “we wanted to take a moment to celebrate some of the amazing things the YouTube community created. Over the years, we’ve seen that a single Rewind created by YouTube can’t possibly reflect the full breadth of our creator community.”
At the same time, YouTube said, it’s planning a different kind of “experience” to fête its millions of creators.
“Thank you to all the creators involved in Rewind — we’ll be [eyes emoji] for your Rewinds as we refocus our energies on celebrating you and the trends that make YouTube [fire emoji] with a different and updated kind of experience — stay tuned!” The YouTube Creators account on Twitter said in a post. The news of Rewind’s cancellation was first reported by Tubefilter.
Last year, YouTube didn’t produce a Rewind video, saying it didn’t feel appropriate given the chaos of 2020. Rewind was intended as a “look back at the year’s most impactful creators, videos and trends,” the platform said a year go. “But 2020 has been different. And it doesn’t feel right to carry on as if it weren’t. So, we’re taking a break from Rewind this year.”
YouTube has struggled to find the right tone for Rewind in recent years. In 2018, YouTube Rewind set the record for the most dislikes of any video on the platform, as creators complained it ignored the video platform’s community by featuring mainstream celebs instead of homegrown YouTubers. Indeed, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki’s own children told her the 2018 video was “cringey.”
Since 2012, YouTube Rewind had been produced by L.A.-based digital studio Portal A.
While Rewind is getting axed, YouTube expects to continue released annual trends lists including the top 10 trending videos, creators and songs of the year.
