Creator Pool

Shorts carry no ad slot of their own the way a long-form video does, so YouTube pools the advertising money from the Shorts feed and shares it out. Music licensing costs come out of that pool first. What is left is apportioned by each creator's share of total Shorts views, and the creator keeps 45% of their allocation. Two consequences follow. Licensed music reduces what reaches you because the licence is paid before anyone is allocated anything, and your payout depends on how everyone else performed that month rather than on your own views alone.