YouTube For Musicians: Making Every View Count

Every new musician or band must stay vigilant in understanding new and different ways to market their music.  But that doesn’t mean you have to open accounts on every new social media site or mobile application.  Instead, you should make good use of the digital mediums that have proven to be successful.  The most obvious one is YouTube.  But it’s not enough to simply post a video; you need to employ strategic methods to stand out amongst millions of videos. I’ve gathered some tips and tricks that may help.

An article posted on Music Think Tank.com titled 9 Things YouTube Recommends Musicians Do, That You're Probably Missing provides great direction on how to capitalize on YouTube’s functionality.  For instance, the article notes that musicians should use “tagging” as much as possible when you post a video.  When you add tags to your video, it helps people to find your content.  Don’t remember where to input tags?  Here is a screen shot from a video I uploaded for a class project.  It shows where you can input key words (tags) when you post your videos.

Another great point in the article is to have both a lyric and a music video for each song.  Fans love to have the lyrics of songs.  This is reminiscent of the days when CDs included the lyrics.  Some artists include the lyrics in the description section of the video posting.  Now that music is downloaded, fans need a way to see the lyrics, and a separate video will draw them to other postings on your site.  Hopefully, as they browse your YouTube site, you will have other offerings for them, including “behind the scenes” videos and interviews or testimonials. Also, make sure you provide them with an option to subscribe to your site so that you can provide them with special content.

One final piece of advice from the article is to encourage your fans to be creative with your music.  Ask them to create their own videos using your songs and get their contacts to view them.  Whether they sing it themselves or use it as music in a different video production, these types of additional hits can create more buzz around your music.  Just make sure they appropriately credit you for the music.  You can even create a contest around the most creative video using one of your songs. 

These are just a few suggestions I noted from the article.  The source of this great information is a document published by the YouTube Next Lab called the YouTube Creator Playbook Guide for Music. Here you will find a wealth of information to optimize your presence on YouTube.

Another great resource for new YouTube music marketers is a site compiled by CD Baby’s DIY Musician Blog.  YouTube For Musicians: The Complete Guide has links to numerous articles that have been posted on their blog, including their “favorite tips, tricks, tech-recommendations, and interviews”.  

Finally, if you just don’t have time to do the reading, here is a YouTube video that summarizes a lot of these tips in just six minutes!  

 Source: http://youtu.be/9sV0PLIbYy8

I hope you found this posting helpful.  I look forward to your comments.

Take Care,

D Leigh

References:

Cannon, J. (2013). 9 things YouTube recommends musicians do that you’re probably missing. Musicthinktank.com.  Retrieved on May 10, 2013 from http://www.musicthinktank.com/blog/9-things-youtube-recommends-musicians-do-that-youre-probably.html

Crawford,C. (2012) YouTube SEO- How to do SEO for YouTube videos and rank #1.  Retrieved on May 11, 2013 from http://youtu.be/9sV0PLIbYy8

YouTube Creator Playbook Guide for Music. Retrieved on May 10, 2013 from  http://static.googleusercontent.com/external_content/untrusted_dlcp/www.youtube.com/en/us/yt/playbook/media/pdfs/playbook-music-guide.pdf

The DIY Musician. YouTube for musicians: The complete guide. Retrieved on May 11, 2013 from   http://diymusician.cdbaby.com/musician-guides/the-diy-musicians-complete-guide-to-youtube/

Walker, D. (2013). WalkerDanielleLiveEventProject. YouTube.com. Retrieved on May 11, 2013 from http://www.youtube.com/edit?video_id=us7NuHdufRw&ns=1

Image:

Source: http://www.digitaltrends.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/YouTube-Music.png