Starting and growing a YouTube channel for musicians from scratch might seem like a daunting endeavor. Specifically, for musicians, it’s practically uncharted territory. In most cases, you’re left to your own devices to make your channel gain more popularity as it progresses.
It can be incredibly disheartening when you put all your time and effort into your content only to turn up short. And without any direction, it can feel like you’re just tossing your videos out into the ether.
That’s why getting eyeballs to flock to your videos may be a little more challenging than It seems. Luckily, there are some tried and tested methods that you can put into practice to get a little boost in the right direction.
Today, in this article on how to become a music Youtuber, we are going to give you the tools to get a head start we’ll be going over seven ways you can try to attract viewers to your channel. Whether you’re a free-verse rapper or a pure metalhead, these tips are sure to help you reach out to more and more people.
1 – Make Interesting Covers of Popular Songs.
One of the most valuable tools a musician will have at their disposal is creating or recreating sounds. But apart from using it to make your own songs, you can also use it to make interpretations of what’s current in the world of music.
The idea here is simple. Pop songs tend to get the most traffic on sites like YouTube. A portion of the people searching for those songs will also want to search for covers. And when the numbers trend in tens or hundreds of millions, even capturing a small percentage can be a massive payoff.
Now, this doesn’t mean that you have to bankrupt yourself creatively. Your purpose is to cover a pop song. How you cover, it is entirely up to you. And in fact, some of the most appreciated covers tend to be those that add their own personal flair into the mix.
More than just getting a few clicks, covering songs is a great way to give people a taste of your creative style. Think of it as a small appetizer to your own songs. You’re drawing people in by the popularity of the song you’re covering, but you’re making them stay because of how unique you might sound to them.
As long as you can keep it interesting enough, this approach is foolproof for boosting your numbers by a significant margin. A great place to start would be to reimagine songs in different genres or reharmonize them altogether. (If you want to have a look at someone that does this very well, check out Leapfrog Studios on Youtube.)
The trick with this approach is keeping a proper balance. You don’t want to oversaturate your YouTube channel with pop covers, but you also don’t want to miss out on an opportunity to cover the next big hit. But if you can master the consistency, you’re bound to pull in some new viewers.
2 – Aim for Variety.
Content can come in many different shapes and forms. The same concept applies to music-based YouTube channels. There are more than a couple of different types of videos you can make. So, it’s best to explore your top creative avenues to bring in as many viewers as possible.
The interesting thing about different video types is that they will have a different effects on your channel. Things like songs and covers will encourage people to keep re-watching your videos and coming back to listen to the music they like.
On the other hand, something like a gear breakdown will draw in people who will want to see equipment being used in action. Or a collaboration with another YouTuber will cause them to funnel into your own channel.
All this helps your channel reach out to different communities of people. And the more you cater to a group, the more viewers you’re likely to attract. It’s essentially a self-fulfilling system for YouTubers.
As a side benefit, it also stops your channel from being too saturated with the same kind of content. Mixing things up will keep the channel fresh with new ideas that won’t bore your viewers into dropping out. Even if you cycle through 3 or 4 types of videos, you’ll have enough variety to space out content from week to week.
3 – Play Towards a Niche.
On the one hand, it might be essential to have a varied selection of content to entice different crowds. But on the other, it also helps to lock down what your channel’s ideal audience feeds off.
Picking a niche helps you present yourself in a way that’s unique to you. It’s a subtle branding tactic that you can enforce creatively on your channel. This can be done with things like your brand of humor, your videos’ production, the way you handle ad reads, and so on.
Some of the most popular music YouTubers have been able to brand themselves successfully based on how they target their niche. YouTubers like Davie504 focus on using memes or in-jokes to propel their persona. People like Adam Neely use music theory humor for a more academic crowd. And creators like Composerily use song production breakdowns as a way of poking fun at songwriting formulas.
Acting out strongly on a niche helps differentiate you from the rest of the crowd. Without it, you might just be another music YouTuber in the sea of music YouTubers. But with it, you have an identity that your viewers can relate to.
The possibilities for exposure are endless when you’re able to define yourself into a niche. You’re fulfilling a need that people have for a particular type of video. Or even better, you’re fulfilling a need for something they might not have known they wanted.
Any time you use your content to relate yourself to a larger thematic circle, you’ve already laid the seeds of discovery. People will be eager to click on your videos when they find you in the ‘related videos’ tab of something similar to what they are already watching.
4 – Branch Out on other Social Platforms.
YouTube is just one-half of the equation. A lot of your audience can aggregate off of other social media platforms. After all, if the name of the game is discovery, then it stands to reason that you’d want to branch yourself out as much as possible.
As much as it can seem like a chore, the outreach of these platforms is untapped potential for your channel to gain more views. And luckily, there’s not much that needs to be done on your part to keep it going. All you really need is to make that initial time and effort investment until you’ve built yourself up.
How you plan your approach depends greatly on which platform you’re catering to. Platforms like Instagram can be a musician’s second home. Here you can post snippets of your songs or show your technical prowess on an instrument.
For Facebook, you can give your fans a space to thrive. Getting ideas and feedback for your next videos can be invaluable.
On Twitter, you’ll focus more on reaching out to people who don’t already know you. This means tweeting your collaborations, teasing projects, or making a joke tweet or two so that you can get featured on multiple timelines at once.
If you’re not keen on making much effort, you can even just repost the videos directly onto different platforms. That helps bring in the odd stray view or two, but it also helps increase your engagement variety.
Once you have laid the groundwork for your social media outreach, it’ll become clockwork for you. Perpetuating it will be as simple as posting updates every now and then to get the same logarithmic growth.
5 – Post Analysis of Videos and Gear Breakdowns.
Another clever technique to grant you views is to post videos that dissect the artistry of famous artists. This way, you can piggyback off their fame while also providing something interesting for your viewers.
Analysis videos aren’t uncommon on YouTube, but they can differ significantly depending on who is making them. And they can be an endless source for all your best-performing videos.
The best part about this is that you have complete control over what kind of direction you want to take. You can make videos that analyze an artist’s songwriting abilities, performance, public image, history, sound, skills, or even success.
On the flip side, you can also make videos about the gear breakdowns of these artists. Picking apart an artist’s instruments, effects, plugins, and gear can be an excellent way to catch people who might be searching for this type of content.
A great place to start with this is by picking apart artists that you might be intimately familiar with. From there, it’ll start becoming clear what the format for these videos will be. And using that knowledge, you can branch out to more famous artists.
Granted, your audience for these types of videos will be more of a music-making crowd. But you might even snag the odd audiophile, diehard fan, or curious music appreciator out there.
6 – Build an Enticing Outward Image.
As unfortunate as it is, people tend to judge a book by its cover. It doesn’t matter what your content actually is; people will tend to form their opinions of it just based on the first impression. That’s why, like any good store that needs a storefront, your YouTube channel will need some kind of external portrayal that draws people in.
The first thing you should focus on is your channel’s main page. Here, you want to give potential viewers a chance to figure out what your content is about in the least amount of time.
The Banner Image.
Start with the banner image. You want this to be anything from some album art to a picture of you and your band. Next, work on your name and avatar. These will be how people search for and remember you. So, you want them to be somewhat memorable.
It also helps to have a brief channel trailer or front-page video that gives people an inkling of your content. Video titles and tags are also directly related to your discoverability, which is why you don’t want to leave them out of the equation.
The Thumbnail.
The final piece of the puzzle will be your thumbnails. You want these to be engaging enough to entice clicks but not overly done so they don’t take people away from the videos. This is where your artistic eye will help you in picking out pictures, color palettes, font styles, and graphics.
Once you’re able to dust off your appearances, you’ll start seeing your channel’s positive growth. It’s the same concept that you might use with a great piece of cover art to sell an album.
7 – Be Open to Share.
The tried and true secret to social media success has always lied in sharing. The kind of YouTubers that have always been successful are the ones that have reached across the aisle directly to their viewers.
Taking this concept into practice, you can start by making some lesson-oriented content on your channel. Teaching people how to play your songs or use your composition techniques can be a half-decent way to get the ball rolling. Even showcasing a skill that you learned can be good at communicating on deeper creative levels.
You can even try to branch out by doing vlogs of your experience as a musician. Whether it’s heading out to a gig, buying some equipment, or even spending time in the studio, it’s a window into your life that many viewers will appreciate.
In this day and age of hyper-connectivity, it pays to be more than just an artist behind an album. People will be interested to see how you act behind the curtain. And that’s as good a chance at gaining viewers.
Final Words.
Figuring out how to make it as a music YouTuber may feel like charting new ground. But when you get down to it, it’s no different than setting up any other channel. The only difference will be a few unique approaches that help you grow better as a musician on YouTube. If you follow the tips listed above, you’re well on your way to building the channel of your dreams.
