Being a modern musician can be quite trialling, and most people view other peoples’ desire to turn a music career into a reality as wishful thinking. It is true that making a breakthrough as a musician can be hard, but it is not impossible. The reason why there is such a big problem with this is the fact that big publishing companies push their artists to the top by having immense marketing budgets. An independent artist can’t really compete with that directly. Still, there are things that you can do to boost your popularity, but it will take quite a bit more time and work to get it done.
YouTube has become a big ally of musicians around the world, and a lot of them have managed to turn their channel into a raging success. There are a lot of other ways musicians can benefit from YouTube. Check them out!
Free video publishing platform
Every music enthusiast has his/her own way of digging for new music. Some of us use BandCamp, others like SoundCloud a bit more, I, myself, use LastFm (I like their similar artist section), but YouTube has brought itself up to be a universal way to browse for new music. It is completely free, and you can upload audio only or you can upload music videos. It is a good idea to post well recorded live concerts and performances to give the people who have never seen you perform a taste of what you have to offer. There is no easier way to get your music online, and this is the platform that people are used to, unlike most other music promotion platforms.
Interaction with the fans
The comment section is a great way to interact with fans, and see what they like and don’t like. You can use it to create a better bond with them, and to make sure you appreciate their devotion to you. Loyal fans make a successful artist, this is a fact.
Shareability
Content is a big issue when it comes to online marketing, and you are going to need to use it when promoting yourself as an artist. YouTube content is number one shareable content on social media. This makes having a well ordered YouTube channel a priority for any serious attempt of a breakthrough as an artists. Let’s be honest, we all use our YouTube channels to measure the success of our latest release. YouTube views have become a modern way of evaluating success of any musician, and can be a meaningful factor when it comes to signing with a record company.
Multimedia Vs single media
Regardless if you put in a picture slideshow, album cover, or post a full video for your song, you are still going to get better results than with pure audio presentation. Although, I agree that people should love music for the music, not the video, but promotion is a big deal, and you need videos as allies when building a career in the music industry, and this is why you need to do this. People tend to remember audio-visual experiences a lot better, and a lot of times they rely on the video to remember a certain artist. Every artist, with premeditation or not, has a visual aspect of their performance and should use it to get ahead.
Sampling
Music is still evolving, and there are various approaches to music making. with sampling being one of the more prominent ones. In the old days, people dug through stacks and stacks of records to find that “break” they need. These days, sampling is quite a bit easier. YouTube provides you with an immense database of sampling material that is easy to browse through, remember and finally convert video to mp3 so that you can use it for sampling purposes. Just make sure that you avoid sampling too obviously, and you have big part of your work covered.
YouTube has become a part of our daily lives really quickly, and shows no signs of letting off. If you want to make an attempt at a serious music career, you will need to focus on getting your YouTube channel up and running.