By Dario Cavallaro · Published · Updated
Rumble: check the audience and the video licence before uploading.
Rumble gives creators another place to publish video, with licence options that can affect how the same footage is managed elsewhere. If you already publish on YouTube or Instagram, that choice deserves attention before you upload.
2013: a different route for smaller creators
Rumble’s 2023 annual report dates its founding to 2013. The company describes its initial opportunity as helping smaller creators distribute video while larger platforms increasingly favoured established names.
That was the opportunity Rumble said it saw. Whether it suits your video now depends on the people watching and discussing your subject there.
A larger platform with a changing audience
The same report identifies the 2020 US election period as a turning point in its audience growth. It describes a business combination announced in December 2021 and completed in September 2022, when Rumble became a Nasdaq-listed company.
Rumble had already spent years building its distribution business when that demand arrived. That is what interests me in this story: people looking for another destination found a service that already existed. It had time to develop before the moment that made more people consider it.
By the end of 2023, its reported business extended across video, advertising and cloud infrastructure. Those are dated milestones, rather than a description of today’s audience or a promise that every upload will be discovered.
Watch recent videos in your subject area and read the responses. An audience interested in a repair tutorial may have little overlap with the audience that drove a platform’s growth during an election.
The licence is part of the upload
Rumble’s official licensing guide distinguishes several options. Exclusive Video Management gives Rumble exclusive representation rights and can involve distribution and monetisation on YouTube. Video Management excluding YouTube changes that distribution scope. Rumble Player is non-exclusive and monetises on Rumble. Personal Use does not involve Rumble monetisation.
These are not interchangeable buttons. Read the current terms shown when you upload, especially if the same video already exists elsewhere or a client, collaborator or music provider has rights in it. A licence choice can affect what happens to copies on other platforms.
Monetisation also depends on audience response, eligibility and the agreement. Selecting a licence does not guarantee earnings.
The opportunity for an existing video is another route to viewers, sometimes including wider distribution under the management options. Whether the same footage can sit on YouTube and Rumble, and who manages it there, depends on the licence. Keeping the original export gives you something to adapt when a relevant destination emerges; it does not settle the rights to distribute it.
What content could fit?
Start with video that already has a reason to exist: an explanation, a demonstration, an interview or a complete story. Someone arriving from search should understand the subject from the title and the opening. A caption written for an Instagram follower may not give a new viewer enough context.
Suppose you have a three-minute repair demonstration. Keep the explanation, name the fault in the title and make sure the opening shows what is being repaired. The description can link to the relevant guide. Someone finding the video without knowing your Instagram account then has enough context to follow it.
Repurposing opportunities worth testing
- An interview can become a complete answer. Extract the section that answers one useful question. Keep enough of the question to make the answer understandable, identify the speaker and retain any qualification that changes its meaning.
- A carousel can become an explained demonstration. Use the slides as a structure for a new video, adding narration or an actual example. A sequence of images needs enough viewing time and context to work as video.
- A tutorial can gain another point of entry. Start from the clean original, give it a title matching the problem it solves and write a description for someone meeting you for the first time. Link to the relevant resource, rather than an unrelated homepage.
Check the export as well as the licence
Work from the clean original and watch the complete export. Text needs to remain readable, the crop needs to show the demonstration and the voice needs to be clear. Check that you have permission for the footage, images and music on the destination. Audio available inside Instagram may carry permission only for use in that app.
Find relevant videos and conversations, then decide whether an adaptation is worth testing. The time required to maintain another destination belongs in that decision too.
Read platform-fit distribution for choosing destinations. The original Rumble carousel is part of Digital Shifts Present.