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Promoting your music on YouTube is no longer optional. It’s an absolute must if you’re serious about your career as a music artist who wants to grow their fanbase and get their music out there.
As you’re probably well aware, YouTube is a powerhouse for music discovery. A recent Digital Media Trends study from Deloitte found that an astounding 82% of Gen Z and 70% of millennials discover new music and artists through watching social media and user-generated YouTube videos. That’s more than double the amount of listeners discovering music through other sources like recommendations from streaming music services or radio stations.
As a music artist, knowing how to use YouTube effectively for music promotion can have a tremendous impact on getting your music discovered by new listeners and growing your fanbase.
Here’s our step-by-step guide to help you promote your music using YouTube to attract new listeners and fans.
1. Optimize your YouTube channel
Consider your YouTube channel your official artist hub and presence on YouTube. It should reflect your overall artist branding, style, and personality and allow listeners and fans to easily discover more about you and your music.
How awkward would it be if you visited Beyoncé’s official YouTube channel to find it without an official, high-quality profile photo or with branding that didn’t match the iconic Beyoncé imagery we’re all so familiar with? Exactly.
With that in mind, make sure that you update your YouTube profile regularly, alongside all of your other social media pages.
Key elements to update on your YouTube channel include: your official artist photo, channel banner, links to your other social media platforms and streaming sites, bio, and contact information.
We recommend organizing your channel into playlists and shelves for easy navigation. Many artists like to highlight their official music videos in a featured playlist shelf on their channel page. Separating out content by album release or content type (like behind the scenes footage, audio streams, fan videos) will make it easy for viewers to jump right into the content they’re looking to watch.
2. Create Engaging Music Content
Official music videos may seem the obvious choice for what to share on your artist YouTube channel, but they are definitely not the only type of videos to create.
Video content for your YouTube channel can take the form of everything from official music videos and lyric videos to visualizers, behind the scenes footage from touring or recording in the studio, tutorials, live streams, vlogs, and more.
YouTube Shorts are a great new format for artists to easily engage with their fans and subscribers in between regular video releases. These short-form videos can be easily cross-posted from other social platforms, like TikTok and Instagram Reels, and are a great way to regularly share quick content with your audience.
Fans who are engaged with you and your music often want to see more than just the official, produced videos, and love to see content from artists that give them a personal connection to your creative journey.
Another way to think of this is to imagine a new fan who just discovered your music. They might look your song up on YouTube and land on your official artist channel. This fan is much more likely to subscribe or listen to more of your music if you have a wealth of videos and content available. Give them a reason to stick around and become more emotionally invested in your journey. Ideally these pieces of content can help them develop from a casual listener to a superfan.
In the case that you do not yet have any official music videos, we always recommend at least uploading static image audio videos for each of your songs. In the case that someone is looking for your music on YouTube (or even Google), it should be easy for them to find and start playing your music.
Also consider collabs with other music artists or video creators. Collaborations are one of the most effective ways to grow your audience on YouTube and social media. Working with other creatives or music artists can help expose your music to their established following (and vice versa). Whether you’re recording a duet, interview, guest appearance on their podcast, or simply promoting each other’s content, video collabs can absolutely help you tap into a new group of listeners and fans.
Promoting your video content doesn’t stop on YouTube. Cross-promote your videos across your other social media platforms, like Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook. Share video snippets, behind-the-scenes content, and stories to drive traffic back to your YouTube channel for maximum impact.
3. Leverage YouTube Search Trends and SEO
Now that you have the foundation of a robust and active profile on YouTube and artist-centric content to get new listeners engaged, it’s time to tap into that powerful YouTube SEO.
First and foremost, you want to make sure that the content you’re sharing on YouTube is easily discoverable. Use relevant keywords in your video titles so that listeners are able to find your music and videos right away. A new fan searching for your song title or artist name should be able to get the relevant video from your channel right at the top of their search results.
Then think about the information that is helpful to include in your video descriptions. Now that your fan is tuned in, consider what else might be relevant to include to help them along their fan journey.
For example, someone watching your latest music video might be interested in knowing the lyrics to the song or want more information on how to follow you on different social media platforms or listen to your music on a different streaming site. Perhaps they like the song so much they want to buy a t-shirt or get the album on vinyl. Don’t make your fans do the work here (more often than not, if it’s not easy to find or obvious, they may just give up entirely and move on to something else). Instead, include the relevant info and links right in your video descriptions so that your fans can take action and build a deeper connection.
Now, let’s talk about taking advantage of YouTube as a powerful search engine. In order to reach brand new listeners and fans who don’t yet know about you or your music, consider tapping into trending search topics.
One way to do this is through song covers that showcase a popular song reimagined in your own artist style. Take the latest song taking over social media and put your own artist take on it. Listeners searching for this song on YouTube may just end up on your cover version and stick around because they like your interpretation and overall artist sound.
4. Use Thematic to Reach Influencers
A major strategy for increasing your music reach and fans is working with video content creators who can introduce your music to new audiences.
Thematic makes this process easy for independent music artists. Through Thematic, you can easily connect with top YouTubers, video content creators, and social media influencers who are looking for music to feature in their videos.
This type of music promotion and exposure is completely organic and powerful – imagine your song being the intro or background track for a popular YouTuber’s vlog, instantly reaching thousands of potential fans. Best yet, Thematic is completely free for music artists to use.
Thematic helps you reach influencers without the typical hassle of trying to manage the email outreach yourself or wasting money for influencer marketing campaigns that don’t produce results. This gives your music the best opportunity to be discovered by listeners who are most likely to engage. It’s an easy, effective way to increase your overall visibility and grow your fanbase.
Launch your song promotion campaign on Thematic for free at: https://hellothematic.com/artists
5. Engage with Your Audience
Engagement is key to growing a loyal fanbase. This can come in many forms, including liking or replying to comments on your videos, asking questions and encouraging conversations, sharing fan-created videos, or even acknowledging your fans with in-video shout-outs.
Fan engagement is key to deepening your artist-fan relationship and building a community. When listeners become invested and emotionally engaged with your artist brand, they’ll feel more connected to your music and want to share it with others. This is a great and natural way to encourage organic listener growth.
Take this a step further and help your artist brand get exposed to new audiences by leaving comments as your official artist YouTube channel on relevant fan videos or content that resonates with your community. Now, this doesn’t mean spamming videos with comments.
Rather, make comments as your artist channel as it makes sense. If you have a personal interest in gaming content, for example, and that is a facet of your artist brand, engage with your favorite gaming creators as your artist channel to help surface your name within those communities.
For example, we always recommend that artists drop a thanks comment on the YouTube videos featuring their music from the Thematic campaigns. This is an easy and effective way to strengthen the connection with the influencer while at the same time getting additional exposure with that influencer’s own fan community. Viewers of that video can then easily click-through to watch more of your videos or even subscribe to your channel.
Conclusion
Promoting your music on YouTube requires a combination of creativity, strategy, and consistency. From optimizing your channel to creating content and leveraging SEO to utilizing influencer platforms like Thematic and engaging with your audience, there are plenty of ways to get your music discovered by new listeners.
By staying active and engaged and following these simple steps, you can turn casual viewers into loyal fans and grow your profile as a music artist.
For more tips on promoting your new music releases, check out Thematic’s blog post on 5 ways to promote your music after release.
This guest post was written by Audrey Marshall, the Co-Founder & COO of Thematic.
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