Tag: YouTube Community

Categories
Artist Advice Industry News News

YouTube Growth Hacks For Musicians [Video]

YouTube Growth Hacks For Musicians

YouTube can be a powerful force for music discovery and fan engagement, but most artists don’t know how to make the most of it. We can help

Let’s be honest: The music industry is divided on YouTube. The popular video platform is free to use and has spent a full decade being ranked as the best music discovery platform. However, YouTube has also come under fire for underpaying musicians.

A report from 2017 found that a musician hoping to earn minimum wage from YouTube alone would need at least 2.4 million video views per month. That view count is far above the number of streams required to make the minimum wage through Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, or other services.

Another report from January 2022 found that YouTube pays an average of $0.002 per view to musicians. Only two services, Deezer ($0.0011) and Pandora ($0.00133 per stream), pay less.

Still, the music industry needs YouTube. The brand name is synonymous with online video, and everyone looking for video clips will come to YouTube before searching anywhere else. Nobody can deny YouTube’s popularity regardless of how you feel about its policies and royalty rates.

The same can be said for millions of music fans. Listeners will browse YouTube for official streams and videos before turning to other streaming services. To abandon the platform would mean alienating a massive potential audience.

In this Music Biz update, host James Shotwell tells artists to fight YouTube’s system by growing their channel with original, regularly scheduled content. He offers advice to improve your channel, promote your content, develop ideas, and set long-term goals. If you want 2022 to be the year your Youtube following skyrockets, then this video is for you.

Music Biz is brought to you by Haulix, the music industry’s leading promotional distribution platform. Start your one-month free trial today and gain instant access to the same promotional tools used by BMG, Concord, Rise Records, Pure Noise Records, and hundreds more. Visit http://haulix.com/signup for details.

Need help growing your YouTube channel but cannot access the video above? Don’t worry! Our friends at Hypebot recently published a great article on the same topic.

Categories
Industry News News

YouTube Expands Music Video Analytics for Artists

YouTube has dramatically expanded its Analytics for Artists tools, including mobile support and enhanced audience-interaction statistics.

Data is the name of the game in business today. With the vast majority of engagement and interaction happening online, especially during the pandemic, those getting ahead are doing so by studying their analytics. Most platforms offer musicians so level of insight into how fans are interacting with their art, but YouTube’s latest development is leaving many competitors in the dust.

YouTube unveiled an upgraded Analytics for Artists program this week. The rollout included a short video and a release published under the YouTube for Artists banner. Check out the clip below:

Analytics for Artists, now in YouTube Studio, provides a new and improved view of an artist’s catalog on YouTube. Analytics for Artists will be available for all Official Artist Channels and provide access to a unique set of features that will equip artists and their teams with the knowledge they need to make the most informed and strategic release plans. 

What can you expect from Analytics For Artists:

  • Understand Your Audience: The new ‘Total Reach’ feature gives artists and their teams the most comprehensive view of how their music is reaching audiences across YouTube. This includes videos uploaded to their official channels in addition to those created and shared by fans, tastemakers, and collaborators that contain most of the artist’s recordings.
  • See How Your Music Inspires Fan Creation: The new ‘Song Detail’ feature makes it easy for artists to see all of the videos that have been created for a specific song within their catalog and contain most of their song recording. This content created by users benefits artists of all sizes and is largely incremental to views of their official content on YouTube. On average, the top 1,000 artists on YouTube get over 20% of their chart eligible views from videos created by users. From official uploads to fan-created lyric videos, covers, dance videos, and more, Song Detail shows all of the ways in which fans are enjoying and engaging with any specific track, all in one place.
  • Comprehensive and Actionable Data: Analytics for Artists is home to the most robust set of audience and performance insights you can´t find anywhere else. Understand how your catalog is distributed across the entire YouTube ecosystem and how your audience engages with it: impressions, clicks, demographics, retention, and engagement data. It’s all here and now in real-time.
  • Easy Access to Real-Time Insights: In addition to desktop, artists can now easily access these new insights on the YouTube Studio Mobile app, enabling them to get data and notification updates, in real-time, whether they are on the road or in the studio. Having the most up-to-date information at your fingertips will help with prompt and informed decision making.

What makes YouTube’s new developments so impressive is how it show’s the company’s understanding of its unique ecosystem. Unlike Spotify or Apple Music, anyone can upload their favorite song to YouTube. The new tools crawl the depths of the platform to provide insight into the ways an artist’s creative output inspires others. That kind of information can completely change a musician’s approach to marketing and fan engagement in meaningful ways.

Your move, everyone else.
Categories
Industry News News

YouTube claims it paid over $3 Billion to the Music Industry in 2019

YouTube, one of the most popular destinations for music discovery and consumption, is citing huge 2019 payouts to change the conversation around its notoriously low royalty rates.

In a quarterly blog post released this week, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki praised her company’s relationship with the music industry. “YouTube offers twin engines for revenue with advertising and subscribers,” she wrote. “Paying out more than $3 billion to the music industry last year from ads and subscriptions.”

YouTube recently announced $15.5 billion in ad-supported revenue for 2019. Before you start believing the company gave nearly 20% of that money to the music business, take a moment to read Wojcicki’s comments again. The $3 billion paid to the industry is from a combination of ads and subscriptions (meaning YouTube premium subscriptions, which now number above 20 million worldwide).

That said, the $3 billion mentioned in Wojcicki’s report is pretty stunning. According to calculations published by Music Business Worldwide, the 2019 payouts account for one-quarter of YouTube’s lifetime payments to the music industry. MBW believes YouTube has overtaken or is close to overtaking Apple Music as the industry’s second-largest digital partner (behind Spotify).

These numbers are huge, but they are nothing compared to the video consumption rates YouTube has shared in recent years. In 2018, YouTube claimed that “more than 1 billion music fans come to YouTube each month to be part of music culture and discover new music.” In June 2019, a report came out claiming that music videos were watched just under two trillion times on YouTube in 2018, representing 20% of total views on the platform. $3 billion is a lot of money, but is it enough to represent one-fifth of the total consumption on the platform?

Wojcicki also shared the following insights about YouTube’s evolving relationship with the music business:

We’re also partnering with artists to support and amplify their work through every phase of their career. Dua Lipa was in YouTube’s first-ever Foundry program — our initiative to develop independent music acts. Justin Bieber and Billie Eilish have built massive global audiences by directly connecting and engaging with fans on YouTube. At just 18 years old, Billie is now one of the world’s biggest stars with five recent Grammy wins. And from its early days, YouTube has been a home for artists who found creative ways to use the platform to help expand their reach. In 2005, OK Go had one of the first viral hits with their music video, “A Million Ways.” Fans posted their own versions of the boy band-inspired choreography, and OK Go decided to make it official with a dance challenge on YouTube. We continue to see unknown artists make it big with a single viral hit. Last year, Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road” became a YouTube phenomenon and the longest-leading single atop the Billboard Hot 100.

YouTube has long been criticized for its notoriously low royalty rates on views, but the numbers from 2019 show that image may be changing for the better. We’ll bring you more on the platform’s relationship with the industry as soon as additional details become available.

Categories
Industry News News

YouTube is Testing ‘Applause,’ A New Way to Support Creators

Following the lead of Twitch and similar live-streaming platforms, YouTube will soon allow viewers to support content creators directly.

YouTube is the largest video platform in the world, and it often ranks as the most popular service for music and content discovery. However, the service has repeatedly come under fire for its notoriously low royalty payments. YouTube pays less per view than Spotify, Tidal, or Apple Music pays per song stream. It pays less than virtually anyone, in fact, but the company is testing a new tool that may offer relief to content creators.

Applause, which is now in the testing phase of release, allows views to contribute to content creators directly. The idea is very similar to the micro-transactions available to viewers of Twitch streams. On that platform, Twitch viewers can purchase ‘bits’ with real money. Viewers can spend bits in a variety of ways. Creator channels can offer custom emojis, special channel statuses, and more for bits. Twitch pays creators one cent for every bit they earn from their viewers in a month.

Youtube’s Applause is less transparent. It is unclear how much creators make off the contributions to their channel, which is upsetting creators currently involved in the testing phase of the product rollout. It’s clear YouTube hopes this development will off-set criticism for its royalty payments, but the company will first need to provide clarity on the exchange rate.

Australia, Brazil, India, Japan, Korea, Mexico, New Zealand, and the USA are on the beta test shortlist. You may see an ‘Applaud’ button under participating content creator videos. Clicking the button offers a pop-up to see how much an applause costs. The U.S. pop-up appears to offer a standard $2 donation option.

There are no limits on the number of donations or Applause that can be given to a single video. YouTube also guarantees that personal details are not shared with the creator and are not made public. That seems rife for abuse, right?

Purchase limits for the YouTube Applause feature are in place to prevent abuse. Users can only spend $500 a day or $2000 per week Super Chats, Super Stickers, and Applause. These payments are tips to the creator and cannot be refunded.

Categories
News

YouTube launches direct to fan “Community” tools

YouTube exists for one purpose and it does that one thing very well. YouTube is where you go to upload and share videos with the world. It’s a simple idea that has brought together a global community of creative people in a way that wasn’t even possible two decades back, but the time has come for the world’s largest video community to think about the future and how they will empower their creators to keep the views counts rising for many years to come.

This week, YouTube announced the beta launch of a “Community” tab, which is intended to make it easier for content creators to engage with their audience. It’s not about video as much as it is building a better relationship with your viewers through a variety of updates. Creators can now use text, images and animated GIFs to engage fans between uploads.

Commenting about the launch in their official blog announcement, YouTube wrote:

“This is a first step and, with creator and fan feedback, we look forward to rolling out new features and functions as well as including more creators in the months ahead.

As creators, your ideas and feedback shape our platform, inspire new features, and help us decide what to prioritize. It’s you who ultimately build YouTube and as the new Community product shows, together, we make YouTube better for everyone.”

You can view a video detailing the launch and how it will impact at least one YouTube channel below:

Exit mobile version