2 Big Reasons You Need To Promote ALL Your Music On YouTube

IIf you’re a music artist, or even a music fan, in the world today then you know about YouTube. But check this out – YouTube is one of the #1 sources of online music consumption. In other words, a ton of people use YouTube to listen to music online. That’s why as an independent musician you need to be on top of your YouTube game. It doesn’t matter what genre of music you’re in or who your fanbase is. There’s a good chance you’ll find fans of your type of music on YouTube. So if you’re not already doing it, you need to start. Now.

There’s a few different ways you can start to get your music out on YouTube. First and most obviously you can throw up an actual music video you’ve created for one of your songs. But sometimes up and coming rappers and singers don’t have music videos they can use. And what if you’ve already uploaded a music video but have another track you want to promote? YouTube music promotion should not be limited strictly to traditional music videos. Use the social media network to promote all your tracks. Now, I can already hear some people saying “I hate YouTube videos that are just a picture with music playing in the background.” And that’s fine, you’re allowed to hate it. But some people don’t. And that leads us to the first reason you need to promote all your music on YouTube. Peep this.

1. YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world, second only to Google

(For those who don’t know, a search engine is just a website that people go to, to find information on the internet like… well… Google.) You’ve probably heard the phrase “Oh just Google It.” Google has become a part of the world’s vocabulary when you’re trying to describe a way to search for information you want to know. Well the funny thing is, YouTube is becoming the same way. People regularly tell friends to “YouTube this new song I listened to.” The website is becoming the default way for people to find certain types of media on the internet. And that’s exactly why you need to be all over it.

So don’t be so opposed to videos that are a static image with music in the background. Embrace the practice and start doing it yourself. You can also do slideshow videos with a series of images. There are also dope tools online that help you make some pretty unreal videos with just a few images. And if you’re against all of the above, then you should make a video of yourself or your band (maybe some performance shots or an in-the-studio clip, or hell even just some day-in-the-life type stuff) and put your song as the background music. The main point is to get your music (ALL of it) on YouTube somehow. There is traffic there for the taking.

2. You can target your music to the types of people most likely to become your fans

Image credit: sko11ie on Flickr

When you upload a music video to YouTube you have to enter certain details like the title, description and tags. There are ways to optimize these info fields for maximum impact. Firstly, it’s a great idea to include keywords related to your specific music in the title and description fields. Things like your genre (Hip-Hop, R&B, etc.), the mood of your music (Positive, Club, Mellow etc.) and even dates of release (if it’s the current year) can help your songs get found. So a good title might be something like “New Hip Hop Music 2012 – Lyrical Militant – Humanity’s Tragedy.”
This is because a lot of people on YouTube and Google search for new music in exactly this way. They type in things like “New Hip Hop Music” or “Hip Hop Songs 2012” and similar things. So use keywords wisely. It’s also a good idea to include the same types of keywords in your description field. This all helps you get ranked for certain types of searches. You should do something similar in your tags, but what’s great about tags is they help you get found for keywords you wouldn’t necessarily want to put in your title and description.

If you’re an indie artist, you should know the importance of giving people a frame of reference to your musical style. No matter how unique your music is, there should be a few big name bands out there that influence you and have similar styles of music. Use these big name artist’s names in your tags field and you may end up showing up in the “related videos” section on YouTube for some of their videos. And who is more likely to become a fan of your music, other than people who like similar bands/artists to you or your band.

So you can see above, the volume of people on the platform and the ability to somewhat-target your music to certain types of people are two huge reasons why you want to be all over YouTube. There’s no reason for you not to be on there. If you’re a musician there are many different choices in terms of places you can dedicate your limited time to promoting your music. YouTube should definitely be one of them.

Omar Zulfi is a Hip-Hop artist, blogger and music producer from Canada. He makes Rap & Hip Hop, Pop and R&B Beats for PhatBootyEnt.com Learn more about how to use YouTube for your music with the guide “How To Promote Your Music And Videos on YouTube.”