What Does ft. Mean on YouTube?
You’ve seen a music video on YouTube and it has the abbreviation ‘ft.’ in the title.
Usually this will be in the form of Artiste A ft. Artiste B.
If you’re wondering what does ft. mean on YouTube – no, it definitely doesn’t mean ‘feet’, in this context at least.
In this article, you’re going to learn exactly ft meaning in YouTube.
You’re also going to learn why artistes do this and what are the benefits to them.
Table of Contents
What Does ft. Mean on YouTube?
The abbreviation, ‘ft.’ means that an artiste is featuring another artiste on YouTube.
You can easily identify this on the title of the music video on YouTube.
It is much easier and shorter to put the abbreviation ‘ft.’ instead of the full word ‘featuring’ on the title of music videos on YouTube.
Examples of ft. on YouTube
“Enrique Iglesias – Bailando (English Version) ft. Sean Paul, Descemer Bueno, Gente De Zona”
In this video, you can see Enrique Iglesias has recorded a song titled “Bailando”.
But instead of recording it by himself, he has collaborated with:
- Sean Paul,
- Descemer Bueno, and
- Gente De Zona
all in one song.
Artistes can feature more than one other artistes on a single music video.
Take a look at this example:
“Justin Bieber – Baby (Official Music Video) ft. Ludacris”
In this example video, you can see the main artiste Justin Bieber has recorded a very popular song titled “Baby”.
But he’s chosen to collaborate with Ludacris.
Hence the title as ft. Ludacris which means featuring Ludacris.
Why do Artistes Feature Other Artistes on YouTube?
Artistes frequently collaborate with other artistes to increase their audience size.
Collaboration creates a synergy by combining their respective audiences all while reaching out to new people that never heard of any of the individual artistes before.
Enrique Iglesias frequently features other successful artistes to penetrate their audience and subsequently increase his revenue.
Those artistes also benefit by gaining exposure from being on his platform and also making more money too.
This mutually beneficial strategy helps many artistes to continue the upward movement in their musical careers.
Eminem ft. Rihanna
This allows artistes to explore new musical territory without risk to alienating their fanbase.
Eminem and Rihanna both have different styles of music but still managed to carefully create synergy with their fanbase.
The Internet has made collaborations possible and helped talented artistes reach more people, even if they’re far away from each other geographically.
Collaborations have also helped to break down the boundaries that had previously separated music.
Now, people from all over the world can easily find new artistes and connect with them through social media channels like YouTube and Facebook.
This has further allowed musicians to reach an international audience without needing to know any other languages.
Conclusion
One of the most common abbreviations you’ll see on YouTube is ‘ft.’
The full form of ‘ft.’ is ‘featuring’, which means that an artiste is featuring another artiste on their music video.
Outside of YouTube, ‘ft’ without the dot means ‘feet’.
e.g. 5ft = Five Feet or 5′
The use of ‘ft’ on YouTube is not limited to music videos, but can be used for anyone that is collaborating with anyone else.
But mostly, you’ll just see it on music videos on YouTube.
About the Author: Jian Brant
