Why YouTube is the dominant player in today’s music industry
YouTube is the #1 music streaming platform in the world. It’s the #2 search engine in the world. It’s slowly replacing radio, MTV, and many other platforms for music discovery. It’s become a serious revenue source for musicians too (some CD Baby artists have earned more than 40k from YouTube ad revenue). And that’s why YouTube is more important than anything else in your music career — besides the actual music, of course.
But these days it takes more than just a couple music videos to establish a YouTube presence.
According to Lucy Blair:
The days of aiming to create a one-hit ‘viral’ on YouTube as a marketing strategy are long gone. These days it’s more helpful to think of YouTube as your own TV channel. Think of content as programming – and not programming for an album cycle, but a 12-month content cycle.
It’s essential to create a programming schedule and produce regular content to drive subscribers, repeat views and watch time, and to give subscribers a reason to return to your channel.
How do you develop a music marketing plan, though? And maybe more elementary, what kind of content should you be creating?
Well, CD Baby happens to have a free downloadable YouTube guide to help you promote your music.
Still need more inspiration? Check out these 32 viral video ideas for busy musicians.
Now, what should you DO with your videos to build your fanbase using YouTube?
1) Read our “Top 5 tips for music video promotion on YouTube” for the basics.
2) Then check out our Complete Guide to YouTube for more advanced tips on developing your YouTube presence.
3) Also be sure to read Lucy Blair’s thorough post on Digital Music News called “STOP Making Viral Videos. START Making a YouTube Content Strategy.”
4) Lastly, download the YouTube Music Playbook to get advice from the source on how to optimize your music promotion on YouTube.
Have you had success using YouTube to promote your music? How long did it take to build a subscriber base? How many videos have you created, and how often are they published? Let us know in the comments section below.
Download our FREE guide to promoting your music on YouTube today:
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Chris Robley is an acclaimed singer-songwriter and award-winning poet from Maine.
His Beatlesque indie-pop and milltown Americana songs have been praised by The Associated Press, No Depression, KCRW, The LA Times, Boston Globe, NPR, American Songwriter, and others.
His poems have appeared in Poetry Magazine, Prairie Schooner, The Poetry Review, and more.
Robley has received a Maine Literary Award in Poetry, Boulevard’s Emerging Writers Prize for Poetry, and in 2016 was selected by former US-poet laureate Robert Pinsky as a finalist for the Dorset Prize.