Every day the rules of promoting your music online change. Just being aware of the changes, and often keeping up with them is much harder still. But the sheer volume of tweaks and updates and new features every day means that at any one time, several easy hacks exist that you can implement in a very small amount of time and they will get you far ahead of your competition. Here goes a few.
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Enable Youtube Content ID For Your Music
Hundreds of thousands of songs are uploaded to Youtube every day, and the owners of every one of those songs wants Youtube to pay them for the views those songs receive. Youtube does this in (at least) two ways.
- By paying the owner of a song for the views received on his channel, once that channel has reached the required subscriber and view hours thresholds to become eligible for Youtube monetization
- By paying the owner of a song for the views received on any video posted on any Youtube channel that contains that song, as long as the song has been registered with Youtube Content ID.
What is Youtube Content ID And Why Should I Get It?
Content ID is audio fingerprinting technology Youtube created which runs on every video uploaded to Youtube. If your song is detected and your song is registered with Content ID, you will get paid for any views that video receives. It doesn’t matter if the video is not on your channel. It doesn’t matter if your channel is not monetized. Youtube will send the money to your distributor, who will include the revenue in your monthly payout.
How Do I Register My Music With Youtube Content ID?
This depends on your distributor. Most upper-level distributors automatically all your releases with Content ID. Most DIY distributors like Distrokid and Tunecore offer it as an add-on that costs a few bucks extra, and it’s well worth it. Contact your distributor and make sure it’s set up for any releases you care about.
- Youtube will most likely not pay you for money earned on videos featuring your music which were uploaded before your song was registered with Content ID. Youtube is also unlikely to pay you for views those videos will receive even after your featured song is registered. But you should get paid for any videos featuring your registered music that were released after you registered.
- Content ID is not allowed on cover songs, karaoke, AI music, and any remotely sus songs. Content ID is also unlikely to work properly on songs that sound like a million other songs, since it will probably get confused and mistake your song for someone else’s. Another reason to make original music, folks.
Convert Your Youtube Channel Into An Official Artist Channel
We’ve all seen the Youtube channels of our favorite artists with the music note logo next to their name. That means it’s an Official Artist Channel (OAC for short). If you’re an artist and you don’t have one, you need to get one.
Why Do I Need An Official Artist Channel?
Better Youtube SEO
When you create a Youtube channel, your distributor and Youtube have no way of knowing that you own that channel. That means:
- When your distributor automatically releases your music to Youtube in the form of auto-generated art tracks, they don’t know where to send it, which is why Youtube creates Topic pages for artists with no OAC.
- When people search for your music in Youtube, your channel may not be at the top of the search results, because again, Youtube does not know that the channel you operate belongs to you.
When you designate your channel as the OAC for your artist entity, your distributor will deliver your music to your channel, which means you get all the views. Youtube will also send you high in the search results for anyone who searches your name (unless you have a very generic name) because they know you’re you.
Analytics On All Your Music Across Youtube
If you’ve been doing music for a decent amount of time, and/or if you have any songs that are even mildly organically popular, chances are that other people in Youtube have inserted your songs into their videos. This is what we in the music business call UGC (user-generated content). Maybe it’s a lyric video. Maybe it’s a Short of someone sharing your song with their followers. Maybe it’s a compilation with your song thrown in. Maybe it’s a gamer who threw your song over their gaming footage. Regardless, when Youtube doesn’t know you own the channel you operate, it’s not going to show you back-end analytics on all the videos not on your channel that use your music. But when you have an OAC, and if you’ve enabled Content ID as we discussed above, it will. This info can give you insight on the kinds of people who enjoy your music who you may not have been aware of.
No More Topic Channel
As we discussed above, no OAC means your distributor auto-generates all your releases on a Youtube Topic channel named after you. You don’t control this channel at all. All those viewers should be interacting with your channel in ways that you choose. With an OAC, they will.
How Do I Turn My Youtube Channel Into An Official Artist Channel?
Ask your distributor to turn your Youtube Channel Into An Official Artist Channel. That’s it. That’s one of their jobs. And it’s free. Some distributors require a few weeks and a few email reminders, but Distrokid makes this process pretty easy. Contact your distributor now with your request, and include the direct link to your current Youtube channel. Also ask them to merge any Youtube Topic channels created that bear your music into your new OAC, and provide them with the links to those channels.
Keep in mind:
- This will not create a NEW channel for you. This will simply convert your existing channel with all its current videos into an OAC.
- You cannot create an OAC for record label channels, since record label channels are normally the home to more than one artist.