As the largest video sharing platform on the planet, YouTube represents a huge opportunity for artists and labels to spin the countless views on the site into profit. Here we look at seven tips for how music labels can up their video revenue game.
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Guest post by Scott Matthews
YouTube is by far the largest video-sharing network in the world. The platform has almost two billion active users, with the numbers growing at a steady rate ever since YouTube was launched back in 2005.
As such, YouTube represents an amazing source of promotion and profit for music labels. A lot of reports already proved this point because:
- People watch five billion YouTube videos every day.
- The platform provides almost half of all on-demand music.
- Last year, 95% of the most watched YouTube videos were music videos.
In such circumstances, the only logical question for you is: How can I earn more money with YouTube? This is a critical issue and before you answer it, you need to understand how the system functions in the first place. Keep reading to learn seven actionable tips for music labels to escalate their online video revenue.
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Organize Your Channel Adequately
In order to start thinking about making money on YouTube, you need to have your own channel and become a member of the network’s partner program. Once you’ve got all that covered, you need to organize the channel so as to divide content into meaningful categories.
Why is this important revenue-wise? Well, you want to improve user experience by giving them the opportunity to choose between different types of content. For instance, you can create playlists dedicated to music video alone, while other features (behind the scenes, interviews, live footage) can also get their own separate categories.
It makes your channel much more transparent and easy to navigate, which means you will encourage users to spend more time consuming your content instead of someone else’s.
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YouTube Advertising
Advertising is the most common mechanism of profit generation on YouTube. It’s a simple process that takes only a few steps. First of all, you need to enable the channel for monetization and activate all ad formats. However, keep in mind that YouTube doesn’t count video views retroactively, so you better make the move as early as possible.
Most advertisers target highly specific consumer groups, so it’s always good to analyze your audience and understand the traits of an average follower – it will help you to adjust content and create music videos that perfectly correspond with the needs and expectations of the target audience.
This makes the content more attractive in the eyes of potential advertisers and you can expect to increase revenue with every video you publish.
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Product Placement
This tip is extremely sensitive, but it can earn you tons of money in case the music video is very popular. Namely, you can make a deal with a sponsor to promote his brand through product placement, but you have to be careful enough not to make it look too pushy and obvious.
It’s a common problem among YouTube advertisers because they can hardly hide the fact that the product is being promoted blatantly. For instance, a song called I’m The One by DJ Khaled promotes several brands: Beats, Bumbo, Ciroc, KandyPens, and Belaire.
With almost two billion views, the song was a major success. However, I recommend you to play it subtly and use product placement only if you really feel it won’t hurt your organization’s reputation.
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Charge 3rd Party Users
If you are publishing a lot of popular songs, you can probably discover tons of videos using your content as the background music. In case you have acquired the YouTube Content ID for a given video in a timely manner, you are free to charge those YouTube publishers who use your audio content.
But you can make this strategy even more lucrative if you play it cleverly and invite subscribers to publish user-generated content with your music in the background. For example, you can encourage fans to craft homemade videos that correspond with the context of your songs.
John Bolden, a digital marketer at Essay Writing Lab, says that another solution is to organize a video contest: “Users can choose their most loved songs and make raw footage accordingly. This won’t only help you to create social buzz and raise awareness, but it will also give you a chance to maximize revenue.”
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Make a Video for Every Song
YouTube is the place where people go when they want to listen to music, but did you know that it’s also the largest music discovery platform? Thanks to its all-encompassing algorithms, YouTube detects the sensibility of each user and suggests listening to lookalike content.
For this reason, you should not leave a single song without the YouTube video. With each song you add to your channel, you increase the odds of getting noticed and improve your earning potential.
Of course, crafting a special video for each and every song is not easy, but you can overcome the obstacle simply by publishing album art videos. It’s the fastest way to create a meaningful video without wasting too much time.
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Add Links to Landing Pages
Who says you need to earn money from YouTube videos directly? There are some indirect ways to achieve the same goal, with the most important one coming in the form of landing page links in video descriptions.
Content writers at UK Careers Booster and Rushmyessay say publishers should remember to add relevant URLs to the very top of a YouTube video description to increase visibility. It can be a link to your music store, online shop, or a landing page containing special offers. After that, it’s all about the numbers – the more views you receive, the more visits you can expect.
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Channel Membership
Exclusive content has always been good bait for customers. YouTube Channel Membership allows you to drive profit through followers who are willing to pay monthly fees in order to get unique content such as badges, behind the scenes, tailored perks, and so on. If you want to join the program, you must have a channel with over 30 thousand subscribers.
Conclusion
YouTube is not only the biggest video-sharing platform in the world but also a powerful profit generator in case you can take full advantage of its features. Music labels should be aware of this fact and do everything they can to maximize revenue.
I wrote this article to present you seven actionable tips for music labels to escalate their online video revenue. These are not the only ways to drive more profit, but they are definitely most productive, so make sure to use my suggestions and put that well-deserved money in your pocket!
Scott Mathews is a professional content creator at AustralianWritings, but he also contributes to Edugeeksclub.com and College-paper.org blogs. His favorite topics include music production, video marketing, and social media campaigns. Besides that, Scott is an amateur guitarist, but it doesn’t stop him from practicing every weekend with his old college band.