YouTube Rewind could have ended again in 2019, nevertheless it looks like YouTube has lastly put the nail within the coffin by simply unlisting each single one among its annual recap movies.

On Tuesday night, YouTube customers within the r/YouTube neighborhood on Reddit seen something odd. YouTube’s official channel had marked each single one among its earlier YouTube Rewind movies as “unlisted.” This mainly signifies that until you may have the precise hyperlink to the particular video, the YouTube Rewind movies at the moment are a lot more durable to seek out on the YouTube platform. They don’t present up on the channel web page or in YouTube search outcomes, although we did discover a user playlist with links to all of the Rewind videos.

Why did YouTube do that? It is unclear, particularly on condition that it has been six years because the final YouTube Rewind. Nevertheless, YouTube creators have been speculating concerning the change. 

Spotify reinvented the yearly recap with Spotify Wrapped, which provides every particular person person a extremely personalised look again at their 12 months on the app. Different apps, like YouTube, have since adopted that path and supply customers with their very own private year-in-review.

Nevertheless, manner again in 2011, YouTube arguably began the entire social media recap development with its annual sequence of highly-produced annual recap movies referred to as YouTube Rewind. The final YouTube Rewind video was in 2019, with the corporate opting not to make one in 2020. 

From 2011 to 2018, YouTube Rewind movies appeared again on the greatest memes, movies, creators, and the rest that outlined YouTuber tradition that 12 months. The corporate produced unique content material for these movies with breakout YouTube stars celebrating the 12 months in YouTube. 

Whereas the movies had been in style for a time, the 2018 version of YouTube Rewind grew to become the most disliked video on the platform on the time after blowback from YouTube customers. Many in style and considerably controversial YouTube creators weren’t included within the recap, which included extra mainstream YouTube stars. 

The corporate dropped its long-running format in 2019, as a substitute making a countdown montage of the 12 months’s high moments, earlier than dropping YouTube Rewind fully.

As for why YouTube has now unlisted the movies? Once more, it is unclear. However there’s hypothesis on-line concerning the timing of YouTube’s change.

Former YouTuber turned Twitch streamer Ryan ‘NigaHiga’ Higa recently shared on a stream that YouTube had beforehand “lied” to him concerning his involvement in a YouTube Rewind video he took half in. He was initially requested to bop in a YouTube Rewind video, which he turned down. YouTube nonetheless introduced Higa in to movie different segments, however then, in accordance with Higa, the corporate tried to stress him into performing the dance as soon as he was on set. Higa says he walked out on the shoot on the time. Higa final posted on YouTube in 2020, abandoning his greater than 20.8 million subscribers to stream every day on Twitch to his 860,000 followers.

Mashable has reached out to YouTube to seek out out extra details about why the corporate selected to unlist the YouTube Rewind archive of movies and can replace this piece once we hear again.