Youtube is a Beast of a Marketing Channel

Patrick Walker (Senior Director, Youtube Music) rep’d Youtube at Midem, along with a number of labels, etc, sharing some pretty interesting factoids. (Live blogged by MusicAlly, via Michael Kauffman) I’ll share a couple highlights that stuck out for me:

Youtube is growing. No, really FAST.

YouTube now generates 4 billion views per day, a 30% increase in the past six months.
It’s got 800m unique monthly users.
60 hours of video are uploaded every minute.

Youtube has new TOOLS for ARTISTS.

Multiple new site templates are available to choose from.
The new Youtube Merch Store plugs into 3rd party services such as iTunes, Google Music, Amazon, Songkick and Topspin among other services, to enable artists to sell, well, merch.

Youtube will be monitoring, managing, and MONETIZING consumer generated media more tightly.

Youtube’s Audio ID / Content ID technology identifies videos that use other artists’ songs. (Labels can pay to use it, and extract licensing revenues in doing so.)
Youtube’s Melody ID technology can match “cover song” melodies to existing original songs. (Again, Labels can pay to use it, and extract licensing revenues to do so.)
Youtube recently acquired Rightsflow, a licensing and royalty service provider that enables artists and labels to secure rights to music for various media.

Youtube advice to artists…

Make playlists.
Shoot videos when touring.
Video-announce news like tour dates and releases.
Collaborate with other artists.
Youtube’s algorithm rewards more frequent uploads, high volumes of likes/shares/comments/etc. Keep this in mind when creating content.
Professional quality does not necessarily mean success. “Raw”, ‘honest’ video can to well when appropriate.

There you have it. Progressive labels and artists are starting to dedicate entire departments to creating, deploying, sharing, promoting, monitoring, and engaging video content. How can you leverage these new tools to promote your music?

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