How to make your music known on YouTube?

Youtube has more than two billion users worldwide and millions of videos. It’s an ultra popular platform for all things music marketing and to promote your music. It’s also the # 1 place to post and showcase your music videos! In this article, we give you some tips on how to promote your music successfully on Youtube.

Moreover, you only need a Youtube link (or SoundCloud link) – private or public – to send your music to the media and music industry pros of your choice that are available on Groover! Find the 2,000 Youtube channels, playlists, radios, blogs and labels directly in your account.

1. Use Youtube ads to increase your visibility on the platform

This is the most obvious way to promote music directly on Youtube because ads are ubiquitous on the platform.

Ads on Youtube are super customizable and can be placed in different spots:

• Ads that appear directly on the Youtube home page to shortcut a potential viewer to your YouTube channel
• Ads associated with keywords that appear when a user searches on Youtube (feel free to use a keyword tool to help you out!)
• Ads broadcast before / during / after the video
• Ads visible only on mobile phones

To start creating ads on Youtube, you need to create a Google Adwords account. If you’ve already done ads on Facebook and Instagram, you’ll see that the process is similar.

To create your Youtube ad, you have to choose:

• The video you want to boost
• The format of the ad and its location (in a video, in a search, etc.)
• A target audience
• A determined budget that will be linked to the cost per click or per view

Feel free to experiment with different formats for Youtube ads and follow up on them to understand which one works best for promoting your music! Remember, targeting your Youtube ads is key! It’s a powerful tool that can be tamed quite easily by using the resources made available by Google to help users get ads.

2. Get your Youtube channel verified

Verification is a dream on many platforms like Spotify, Apple Music and/or Instagram, but the platform in which verification perhaps has the most impact is on Youtube. Verifying your Youtube channel often attracts more attention and gives you exclusive benefits:

• gives you access to detailed stats
• improve the SEO of your channel
• allows you to promote your merch and tours directly under your Youtube videos

To request verification on your channel, you must have posted at least three videos on Youtube. Then you can approach the Youtube support team and make your request.

3. Make music videos and clips that illustrate your music

On an artist’s Youtube channel, you’d expect to find videos that illustrate their songs. These videos allow you to visually unveil your world a little more and show that you are fully invested in your musical project.

On Youtube, clips are king so, we advise you to upload at least one on your channel! Image is inseparable from music, especially on Youtube, which remains a platform for music and entertainment. In addition, uploading a clip is the ideal video to promote with Youtube Ads.

4. Offer a variety of content on your channel

As an artist, your Youtube channel is mainly used to post and promote your new-music and music videos, but there are plenty of other ways to showcase your music on Youtube. Users enjoy learning more about the lives of creators and artists, and this is reflected in the popularity of vlogs on the platform. You can totally – if you have the time and the inclination – offer other video formats on Youtube, be it vlogs, behind the scenes videos, on your musical influences … it will allow you to build a real community around of your musical project. It’s all of this extra content that you offer that contributes to the storytelling that is so important to increase the visibility of your music and retain your fans.

You can also create curated playlists for your fans to listen to. You could playlist your own music or  music you enjoy by other artists. This is a great way for your fanbase to get to know you and listen to your music. This is a key promotional tool for any independent artist to gain listeners and subscribers.

5. Use keywords

The title of the Youtube video is crucial because it must allow you to get as much out of the search as possible and make users want to watch the video. Don’t forget to write a suitable description and add relevant tags to each of your videos. Keep the title short and straight to the point for your live videos and music videos, such as your song name and artist name. For your other videos, you can analyze what is working the most at the moment on Youtube and adapt the content, title and description with interesting keywords in the tags. Youtube Autocomplete and Google Trends are good tools to find the keywords searched by language and country and to know the associated trends.

For example, Youtube searches for “jazz piano” worldwide over the last 30 days. You will also find related searches and where those terms are searched, and you can also compare with similar terms to see which ones are most searched:

6. Create intriguing thumbnails

Now that your video is visible on the platform, you want as many users as possible to click on it. The thumbnail should attract attention and make people want to know more. In general, colorful images are what catch the eye, but the picture quality is more important. If it is blurry, poorly framed, it suggests that the video is also poor quality. We therefore advise you to remember to take pictures when you record a video for your channel and when shooting your clips and other events to ensure a good result. You can also do simple edits using apps like Canva for example.

7. Create a connection with your audience

Listening and building relationships with subscribers is super important in order to increase your Youtube subscriber count and showcasing your music online. We advise you to like or respond to certain comments to create a dialogue. The Youtube Studio app allows you to manage your profile, easily create playlists and reply to comments directly on a mobile!

You can also make community posts that allow you to tease future videos, talk about new updates you may have and stay in touch with your new fans! These posts can be plain text, or contain images, videos, GIFs, Youtube playlists, and even a poll.

8. Collaborate with other artists and creators

Youtube is full of talented creators and artists who want to increase their visibility on the platform. A great way to reach more people is to do collabs and combine your fanbases. Whether it’s a purely musical collaboration or something more general with a creator of the platform, all ideas can bring visibility to your Youtube channel and allow you to gain subscribers. Contact the artists and creators who you would like to work with via the email address provided in the ‘About’ tab of their channel or on social networks.

9. Boost your other platforms with Youtube

With Youtube, you can also boost the visibility of your other platforms! Every video you post is a showcase for your music and the description allows you to talk about your other channels. Please feel free to place a cross-platform link in your bio and at the end of the descriptions under your videos to keep this connection constant with your fan-base. To promote a future release or clip, you can simply post teasers and invite users to follow you on Spotify or Youtube Music, for example, to find all your songs as soon as they are released.

Don’t forget to add links to your social networks to continue developing your community on all your platforms!

10. Place your clip on popular Youtube channels

Streaming your music to popular Youtube channels is a great way to spread the word about your latest track and redirect people to your personal Youtube channel. There are many, in all musical styles, and some curators even offer to stage the songs with animations or to post the lyrics. Some placements are paid and others are not, so don’t hesitate to ask the channel manager via their email, often indicated in the “about” tab.

You can also submit your music to Youtube channels directly on Groover! It’s affordable, really effective in gaining visibility, you are assured to have a response in under 7 days from a music business pro and, most importantly, you’re guaranteed to get your music heard! Find the list of contacts available on Groover, with a selection of more than 2,000 channels, playlists, radio stations, media, record labels,…all available to you in your account.

– Translated by Betty Gonzalez Gray – 

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Next Articles :

> How to attract a community on Youtube?
> How does the Youtube algorithm work?

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Send your music to the channels and other industry pros of your choice directly on Groover now!