Making YouTube Central To Your Music Career
Though YouTube has many limitations and problems it also offers a unique way to combine one's social media, music marketing, music and merch sales and concert promotion efforts with one's music and visual art. That's a lot for any website to take on but YouTube can combine all that in a single shareable video. Recently The Orchard's Scott Cohen and DIY musician Peter Hollens discussed the power of YouTube and separately made strong points in what could be taken as an argument for making YouTube the center of your music career.
Learning From YouTubers
Speakers at last month's Music 4.5: The Rise of Video conference in London addressed the lessons that musicians can take from YouTube stars.
The Orchard's Scott Cohen pointed out:
"What are these kids teaching us that we’re missing? Because they’re doing things very differently to the way the music industry’s doing it.".
"YouTube is their social media platform. It is how they’re getting their message out. That is how they’re engaging with their audience. And it’s their revenue platform. When was the last time you saw an artist that had a really popular tweet that went viral: how much were they paid? On YouTube, you’re making money."
The core concept of YouTube, hosting and streaming embeddable videos for free, allows one's efforts to immediately combine artmaking, marketing and social media. Add in YouTube's own advertising, plus third party services for music, merch and ticket sales, and you have an extremely shareable chunk of media that's also monetizable.
Finding Your Own Approach To YouTube
Peter Hollens recently discussed his use of multiple DIY tools and platforms for going direct-to-fan with special emphasis on YouTube:
"I believe strongly that YouTube’s success as a media site is leveling the entire playing field. Any artist with the drive, talent and the know-how to create their own content can make a living doing what they love, which means more music, more art, more inspiration, and more people on this Earth doing what they were meant to do: create and inspire!"
Hollens approach does include other outlets but his core DIY combo features tools for releasing his music via YouTube, selling it on Loudr and seeking ongoing support for making more videos via Patreon
Hollens also recommends Tubular Labs for YouTube analytics.
Hollens approach illustrates that YouTube plays well with others and that one can find a mix of tools featuring YouTube that support your individual approach.
Together Cohen and Hollens make a strong case for putting YouTube at the center of your music career.
More:
- YouTube Adds D2F Marketing, Live Streams and Other Options To Most Channels
- Loudr's Cover Song Licensing and Sales Platform Opens To New Signups For VidCon Relaunch
- Patreon Receives $2.1 Million In Funding, Jack Conte Currently Supported At $6,153 Per Video
Hypebot Senior Contributor Clyde Smith (Twitter/Facebook) is building a writing hub at Flux Research. To suggest topics about music tech, DIY music biz or music marketing for Hypebot, contact: clyde(at)fluxresearch(dot)com.
I don’t need analytics to see that Youtube has surpassed even commercial radio as the number one music discovery tool.
that’s not necessarily a good
thing
the problem with youtube and 6 reasons why it won’t be the center for music discovery in the future:
1. it’s over saturated
This means it will ultimately value and promote “viral” content over everything else. Viral content is cheap and for the moment. Youtube will eventually turn back into a video site where you primarily share family and informative videos.
2. anybody can upload content
The fact that anyone can upload means great content must compete with amateur content. The ratio of content providers to listeners is probably 1 to 2. This means to have success on youtube, you need to spend more time marketing on and for youtube, than actually making music. This result is a product of bad design, because youtube wasn’t designed for music, it simply pivoted into this position because the space was available to fill. Youtube knew it wasn’t ideal, but they said “we’ll figure out later” Unless they change what youtube is, which would kill their whole operation, they can’t make anything close to being ideal for music and it’s listeners..
3. youtube has made millions off of copyright infringement
Youtube is illegal, sad but true. it makes tons of money and traffic off of illegally submitted content, just like grooveshark, except youtube isn’t being sued for 10 billion dollars.
4. youtube has public ratings, views and comments
Public ratings for artistic content creates the high school popularity contest that’s detrimental to learning to think for yourself. If you want to encourage independent thinkers in the world, then they should be able to view content without being bombarded with what everyone else think. The fact that views and ratings can be rigged also supports that it’s a system that is no good for music and art particularly. When it comes to health and political videos I think it’s ok, because it serves as a rating system based on accuracy of the information. But there are no facts with music, which is why it has ultimately undermine new music, and why so many people are creating terrible music in search of more views. The future of music sites will not included public stats.
5. youtube is for videos not music
When you use your eyes and not ears to listen to something, the focus is now about judgement. For better or worse, it’s what we humans do. Is this person cute? What’s their race? What are they wearing? The reason music is so powerful is because it goes straight to the soul and skips all prejudgments.
6. Low quality music
Music on youtube is low quality. Even the highest bit rated music uploaded comes out shitty on the other end. We’re raising youth that has never heard high quality music and YOUTUBE IS MAKING THIS A STANDARD.
conclusion… youtube is only a leader because we’re still in the beginnings of the internet.. Youtube is a less than ideal place for music and their whole method of becoming a dominant force is questionable at best. IF you learn one thing from the internet you will know that users will drop sites as soon as something much more well thought out emerges, no matter how big they once were. I think youtube will remain a video site, but I don’t think it will be the best place to distribute music.
Youtube is best for home videos, heath, political, movie trailers, music videos, and informative videos. For songs and full length movies, it lacks heavily, but it’s currently the most robust solution for online distribution of media for the one fact that it’s free.