YouTube has launched a new YouTube For Artists tool, which offers performers data and insight tools, as well as insider tips on how to promote themselves. More importantly, it also hands out advice about how to make more money on the platform – much of which essentially amounts to asking viewers directly for additional cash.
The YouTube For Artists site offers acts tips on how to best get discovered and lessons on engaging with fans. Interestingly, it contains a page called ‘Music Insights’ which the Google-owned service says is ‘Coming Soon’. It promises to help acts, ‘Find out where your fans are so you can plan your next tour around them’.
Music Insights will also show an artist’s total number of views from their official music videos and fan uploads through Content ID, which it says ‘will help you figure out where to promote your next single to your fans, the best time zone to release your next video or where you might route your next tour’.
“Success on YouTube leads to greater overall success as an artist, and on YouTube for Artists you can learn about all the current programs we have to make that happen,” explained Marly Ellis, Global Head of Artist Marketing at YouTube.
“That includes getting your YouTube views to lead to charting on Billboard, airtime on SiriusXM and NRJ in France, and free production resources at our YouTube Space locations around the world.
“We want to do more than just give you tools to succeed—we want to help more and more fans discover your channel and videos. So we’re working on new ways to celebrate and promote the wide range of artists on YouTube.”
Yet surely the most clicked-on tab on YouTube For Artists will be ‘Build A Career’ – or, in other words, how to make money on YouTube. (Funnily enough, the URL of the page contains the words ‘earn a living’ – suggesting this was scrapped as a title at the eleventh hour.) The page recommends:
- Becoming a YouTube Partner: Old news for many in the industry, YouTube calls its Partner programme ‘the first step to earning on YouTube’. Intriguingly, YouTube says artists can ‘earn revenue from your videos through ads and paid subscription services’ – a reference to YouTube Music Key platform due for launch later this year. Indeed, it adds: ‘If you’re an artist sharing your music directly through YouTube and you’re interested in being a part of YouTube’s new Music Key beta—a music subscription service that gives users ad-free, offline, and background listening.’
- Sell with videos: This one’s all about self-promotion. YouTube has launched ‘cards’ that essentially allow artists to ask their fans to pay for something other than their video… during their video. The cards come in five different forms: Merchandise Cards, which promote merch; Fundraising Cards, which link viewers to projects on fundraising sites; Video Cards, which link to another YouTube video or playlist; Associated Website Card, which pushes fans though the artist’s own site; and Fan Funding Cards, which allow fans to make a contribution directly on the video page.
- Fan Funding: YouTube then goes more in-depth on fan funding possibilities on the site, encouraging willing uploaders to click their ‘Support My Channel’ tab, which automatically creates a card that appears on their homepage. This can carry a personalised message, and can be enhanced with personalised video carrying the same request.
And then, as if to prove that artists really can make a lot of money on YouTube – despite the negative experience of some high-profile creators – YouTube presents a video in which musicians talk about how they’re making a living through their videos:
Music Business Worldwide
