GMC:er Posts: 25.297
Joined: 23-December 09
From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA
QUESTION: ANYONE ELSE GOT ANY TIPS TO SHARE?
Music is our passion. We want to share it with the world. There is a LOT of competition for eyeballs and ears these days. As such, it’s important to find something to make your music stand out from everyone else’s music. There is SOOO much music being pushing out on youtube every minute of every day that it’s nearly impossible to break through the static and getting your music noticed. So what can you do to get your music noticed and heard?
FIRST, Make some great Music!! It can be just one song. Each song is a new chance to connect with your audience. So don’t think that you have to create an entire album magnum opus before you can release it to the world. You can release an unfinished track to see what kind of feedback you get. You may get a crucial bit of feedback that takes your song to the next level.
So once you have your music track ready, you have to bring people in to the tent. You have to give them a reason to check out your music instead of checking out some other guys music.
One thing you can do is start a podcast. Even if you are not a podcaster. Even if you are too shy to do a podcast. This is a time to grow. Create a podcast about things you care about. Music, home music production, learning songs, learning guitar etc. Have a chat window during your live chat on youtube which is also your podcast once it’s complete. So you have a live session where people can ask questions and when it’s done you have your podcast that people can listen to at any time. This hits people that are watching live and lives on in your youtube page forever. This is a way to turn strangers in to fans. They will come back to see what you have to say and then you can play them a bit of your music. Ola Englund recently stopped doing his FAQ series to switch to a live series. This is is the same thing. He answers questions live and then you can watch it later if you missed it. It reduces his post production time because the entire thing is Live, when it’s done recording, it’s done. No long editing process. It’s a great way to creat content without a huge post production effort.
Once you have people coming back to your youtube channel to see your live podcast or to see your previous podcasts, they can check out your music as well. Don’t be shy to mention your music during your podcast as part of what you are talking about. This is a good chance to ask people to subscribe, and maybe even join your pay channel on youtube. Also a good chance to ask people to join you on patreon for special content just for patreon subscribers. In addition, create some cool merchandise. Make some Tshirts that would be cool to wear no matter what band is on them. People will buy cool merch, no matter which band it is. The goal here is to create as many revenue streams as possible.
Once you have gotten some traction, you will start attracting sponsors who will want you to review their products. Some will give you free products, some will pay you in addition to giving you products. I’ve gotten tons of free music gear from vendors just for doing a review of the gear. If the gear is no good, I just send it back and don’t do the review. If the gear is good and something I’ll use, I give it a review. Establishing these relationships is key. The vendor will share the review on their social media and you can share it on your social media. So now you have two people pushing your video on social media, you and the vendor who you did the review for. All of this without spending money on any ads. The key is to get to a point of critical mass. Once you get to about 3 or 4 thousand youtube subscribers and somewhere around a million views, you have leverage because you have eyeballs looking at your content. This is attractive to vendors. They want to partner with you to help get their product in front of more people Getting to that level of “Influencer” is easier than you think. Just keep making good content. Try to partner with anyone that has similar tastes and views. Partnerships can greatly help you get traction. Contact playlists that have music similar to yours, ask them to put your track on their list. Many will say no, but some will say yes. Keep pushing to do collaborations with people who have at least as big an audience as you, hopefully a bit larger. These collaborations will also help you gain traction. Embrace controversial topics. These generate views. People will start troll fights in the comments. You can always censor them if they go to far. The point is to push it until you reach the critical mass. Start pushing!
