YouTube Tags: The Key To People Finding Your Videos

One of the things that many people overlook when they post their videos to YouTube are the tags. Often there's not much thought given to them, but you'd be surprised how helpful a few good tags can be, especially when it comes to organic search. Not only that, once someone finds one of your videos, the right tags will make sure that more of your videos show up on the right hand sidebar of related videos. Here's what to do.

1. Make sure that you have at least one tag that's directly related to you. This would mean your name and other variations of it. For instance:

Joe Bloe
JoeBloe
Joebloe.com

Or if you're a band:

The Unsigned
TheUnsigned
TheUnsigned.com

Make sure you tag everyone that's in the video, and add them to the description as well.

2. The second thing you should always think about doing is adding a tag that indicates the mood of the song. If the tune is a sad song, make sure that you add a tag that says "sad song." It's surprising how many people just search for "happy" or "sad" or "melancholy."

These two tips can not only help new viewers find you, but increase the chances that they'll find more of your videos after they've found the first one.

For more YouTube tips like these, check out the Social Media Promotion For Musicians book. You can read some excerpts on the excerpts section of bobbyowsinski.com.

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Help support this blog. Any purchases made through our Amazon links help support this website with no cost to you.

Follow me on Forbes for some insights on the new music business.

You should follow me on Twitter and Facebook for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

Check out my Big Picture blog for discussion on common music, engineering and production tips and tricks.

Young Users Fleeing "Dead and Buried" Facebook

There's been empirical evidence that teens have been fleeing Facebook for some time, but a new study by London's University College now confirms that teens "feel embarrassed even to be associated with it." In fact, to many older teens, Facebook is "not just on the slide, it is basically dead and buried," according to the report.

The Global Social Media Impact Study observed the social networking of 16 to 18 year olds in 8 countries over the course of 15 months. The study found that for that age group, Facebook activity was being replaced by WhatsApp and Snapchat. Of course, Facebook recently purchased WhatsApp for a reported $19 billion in cash and stock, and one has to wonder if this study played a part.

The interesting thing is that teens still maintain Facebook accounts at the insistence of their families in order for them to stay in touch with older relatives, the study pointed out. This is somewhat ironic in that it wasn't that long ago when parents were increasingly concerned about their kids spending time on the network.

Another interesting point was that most teens acknowledged that Facebook is actually better than anything else at things like scheduling parties and observing people's relationships, but opted for the other networks anyway. This proves that slicker doesn't always equal better.

If Facebook is to integrate WhatsApp into its network, it can bring that age group back into the fold, guaranteeing a sustained user base at least for the short term. Say what you want about the service, in this case it seems to have made a strategic move at just the right time.

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Help support this blog. Any purchases made through our Amazon links help support this website with no cost to you.

Follow me on Forbes for some insights on the new music business.

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Why It's Important To Verify Your Spotify Artist Account

Many artists have their music on Spotify, but not many know how important it use their artist account as a promotional tool. The first thing you should do is verify your account. How to do that and why it's so important is laid out in this excellent excerpt from Nicholas David's post called The Complete Musician's Guide To Spotify on his Sunshine Promotion website. Here's just one of the promotional tips.

"In addition to being able to have a pretty blue check mark next to your artist name (see below), there are a few perks to being verified. Whenever you release new music, create a new playlist, or announce an upcoming concert in your listener’s area, followers of your music on Spotify will be notified. If notifying your listeners that you’re playing a show near them isn’t reason enough to get verified, I don’t know what is. Getting verified is easy. Having the patience to wait for their reply may not be…

1. First, you’re going to have to set up a regular-old Spotify “listening” profile for yourself. You can get a free account on this page if you don’t already have one. Create Spotify profile

2. Next, you have to submit your artist profile for verification here: Spotify Verification Request Form 

• This process involves marrying a Spotify artist page with a personal Spotify account. The two will remain separate after registration (meaning you’ll have an artist page that you have control over, as well as a standard listening account). Spotify needs to verify that you, a personal listener, are also allowed to modify an artist’s page either because you are the artist or you legally represent the artist.

Make sure you have your

• Artist URI link (which can be found by right clicking on the artist name within Spotify),
• The username for your personal Spotify profile,
• A 300×300 pixel JPG image (and they say that it shouldn’t be more than 500kb),
• A display name in mind for the profile (meaning your artist name),
• A Twitter account.
• Profiles will be approved and verified in a couple of weeks.

Since there are lots of artists trying to make it onto Spotify right now, verification may take longer than usual. I’ve seen it take anywhere from 3 days to 2 weeks. Patience in this step is necessary."

Check out more about Spotify for artists at Sunshine Promotion.

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Help support this blog. Any purchases made through our Amazon links help support this website with no cost to you.

Follow me on Forbes for some insights on the new music business.

You should follow me on Twitter and Facebook for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

Check out my Big Picture blog for discussion on common music, engineering and production tips and tricks.

James Brown's Heirs Should Thank Technology

Whosampled.com recently did a survey of over 200,000 songs and found that James Brown was the most sampled artist by more than two times the nearest artist (Public Enemy). While the Godfather of Soul was the godfather before sampling technology came into being, it certainly gave his career a boost towards the end, and now that he's gone, continues to help his publishing royalties.

As you can see from the list of the top 20 most sampled songs, Mr. Brown is the the only artist to have more than one song appear. Many of the artists and songs are a bit of a surprise.

Once again, the beauty of publishing is that it can provide a continued income stream that could revive many times over during the course of a career and beyond. Long after you're gone, the possibility exists that your heirs could still see a check in the mail, with some luck.

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Help support this blog. Any purchases made through our Amazon links help support this website with no cost to you.

Follow me on Forbes for some insights on the new music business.

You should follow me on Twitter and Facebook for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

Check out my Big Picture blog for discussion on common music, engineering and production tips and tricks.

Radio Reaches An Unexpected Audience

We've heard the claims over and over that Millennials are so wrapped up in new technology online that they don't have time for anything old like television and especially radio. A new survey by Nielsen finds that mostly untrue, at least when it comes to radio.

In fact, it found that 65 million Millennials (age 18 to 34) listen to radio each week, which is about half the people in the age group. That amounts to around 11 1/2 hours of listening per week, which is still behind Gen X at 14 hours and Baby Boomers at 14.5, but it's still far more than was generally thought.

An even bigger surprise is that country is the #1 format that Millennials listen to, followed by contemporary pop and contemporary hits. They're much more mainstream that previously thought.

In general, radio is doing fine and is in no danger of going the way of other older technologies. 9 out of 10 people age 10 and up still tune in per week in some way, which amounts to 242 million people!

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Help support this blog. Any purchases made through our Amazon links help support this website with no cost to you.

Follow me on Forbes for some insights on the new music business.

You should follow me on Twitter and Facebook for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

Check out my Big Picture blog for discussion on common music, engineering and production tips and tricks.

Music And Games Make Friends Again

Music and games - what a great combination. Or that’s what seemed to be the case during the Guitar Hero/Rock Band days of a few years ago. At it’s peak, artists, bands, labels and songwriters saw an unexpected and, for a time, significant income stream that promised to hold up a flagging music industry for a little while, only to have it go the way most that trends do and die almost overnight. After a short fling with gaming, music had struck out.

But gaming insiders knew that the recent experience was only the tip of the iceberg and that music would someday experience a boom in gaming again, only in a different form. As Thom Kozik, then Vice-President of Online Gaming at Atari (and now COO of the Omnia Media multi channel network) forecasted in the second edition of my book Music 3.0: A Survival Guide For Making Music In The Internet Age:

“There was a model that showed up in a few games about a decade ago where the player was offered an option on the music. Because the licensing models were what they were at the time, that didn’t work as well as hoped. Now all these decisions about taste that you can express in an online game puts the control in the consumer’s hands instead of the game studio or publisher. We’ll see the return of the “choose your own soundtrack” model, with direct, immediate payment by the consumer at the time they hit play.”

That prediction looks like it may have come to pass thanks to the recent announcement of a new service by Valve Software called Steam Music, which allows gamers to listen to songs from their digital libraries on their computer while playing a game. Read more on Forbes.

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Help support this blog. Any purchases made through our Amazon links help support this website with no cost to you.

You should follow me on Twitter and Facebook for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

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A Look At Today's Digital Music Consumer

Today's digital music consumer looks a lot like yesterday's digital music consumer, according to a recent report by industry pundit Mark Mulligan's MIDiA Consulting. The infographic below points out a number interesting issues:

• Even after 10 years of paid digital music distribution, people still consume most of their music from radio and CD.

• Already, more people consume music from streaming sources than downloads.

• Music subscription is a force in the music business, but still only has 4% penetration.

The study goes on to show that 55% of digital music buyers and 45% of subscribers still purchase CDs monthly.

The study illustrates that the more things change, the more they stay the same. New technologies have made an impact on the music business and will always continue to do so, but the old technologies don't fade away as quickly as we might think.

Check out the entire report on the Music Industry Blog.

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Help support this blog. Any purchases made through our Amazon links help support this website with no cost to you.

Follow me on Forbes for some insights on the new music business.

You should follow me on Twitter and Facebook for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

Check out my Big Picture blog for discussion on common music, engineering and production tips and tricks.

Last.fm Now Powered By YouTube

In what may be the first of more such alliances, digital music site Last.fm recently launched a radio service powered by YouTube streaming. What makes this significant though, is that it may be a way around the service paying music licensing, since the streams are being generated via YouTube.

Last.fm was one of the first digital services to provide personalized streams, and was growing along with the rest of the digital music space until purchased by CBS in 2007 (where have we heard that before?). Since then it has struggled for attention as both new and old competitors have moved ahead in public visibility.

The struggling service withdrew from most world markets last year except for the US, the UK and Germany in order to control licensing costs. The new deal with YouTube may make it possible to expand back into the markets it left without paying royalties, or at least that's the hope.

This could set a precedent that could prove to be quite unfavorable to artists, bands, songwriters, publishers and labels, and will no doubt be scrutinized by legal departments everywhere.

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Help support this blog. Any purchases made through our Amazon links help support this website with no cost to you.

Follow me on Forbes for some insights on the new music business.

You should follow me on Twitter and Facebook for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

Check out my Big Picture blog for discussion on common music, engineering and production tips and tricks.

3 Keys To YouTube Video SEO

When it comes to YouTube, you won't find a better vehicle online today for getting both your music and your message out there. Teens love it, and get most of their online music there, and it's the second most important engine for music discovery after radio. Still, most artists, bands and musicians don't know some of the keys in taking the greatest advantage of the network.

The YouTube chapter of my Social Media Promotion For Musicians book goes into great detail on the subject of YouTube channel and video SEO (as well as monetizing your videos so they become a new income stream), but we can break it down to 3 key points.

1. Title your videos properly. A haphazard video title is one that doesn't get searched. If it's a music video, be sure to include the name of the song and the name of the artist or band in the title. In fact, always include the name of the artist whenever possible. If it's a cover song, include the name of the original artist who did the song as well.

2. Don't skimp on the description. The more you add in the description, the more likely your video will come up during a search. Be sure to include the names of all the people in the video (as well as the director and producer) and what the video is about in detail. Also remember to include a link to your website at the end so people can get more information if they're interested.

3. Include the proper tags. The tags are important so make sure to spend enough time selecting them. Be sure that your name is one of them, as well as the mood of the song (if that's what you're posting), since many people search for "sad song" or "happy song." Not including a mood tag robs you of an important search element.

Follow these 3 simple rules and you'll find your video viewership will grow substantially as more people are able to find your videos when they search.

To read excerpts about YouTube and other social media from the Social Media Promotion For Musicians book, go to the excerpts section of bobbyowsinski.com

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Help support this blog. Any purchases made through our Amazon links help support this website with no cost to you.

Follow me on Forbes for some insights on the new music business.

You should follow me on Twitter and Facebook for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

Check out my Big Picture blog for discussion on common music, engineering and production tips and tricks.

A Look Into The Music Business Crystal Ball

I've been interviewed a lot recently for publications and podcasts all over the world, and the latest one is on Music Business Facts, where Rodney Holder was kind enough to ask me to appear. Here's an excerpt from that interview (the full interview is on the site now) that looks into the crystal ball to show what I think the music business will be like in our near future.

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Help support this blog. Any purchases made through our Amazon links help support this website with no cost to you.

Follow me on Forbes for some insights on the new music business.

You should follow me on Twitter and Facebook for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

Check out my Big Picture blog for discussion on common music, engineering and production tips and tricks.

Top 10 Played More Than Ever Before

Many of us today think of music life centering around the online world, but that's far from the truth. The fact of the matter is that people still listen to the radio as much as they ever did, and it remains the top way for listeners to discover new music, beating YouTube (the online leader) by a large margin.

That said, the songs that reach the top 40 are played twice as much today than those ten years ago, according to Mediabase, a division of Clear Channel that tracks radio spins for all broadcasters.

For instance, last year's most played song was Robin Thicke's "Blurred Lines," which aired 749,633 times in 180 markets. That comes out to 2,053 times a day on average.

In 2003 the top song was "When I'm Gone" by 3 Doors Down, which was played 443,160 times during the year, or 1,214 time per day on average.

One of the reasons is that there are a lot more Top 40 stations than there used to be, with about 70 new ones created in the last decade in place of more specialized stations that played rock and smooth jazz (which was once heralded as the next new thing in radio programming).

Even on the country stations, the trend is similar, with the top hit of last year, Darius Rucker's "Wagon Wheel" receiving 229,633 plays. In 2003, Lone Star's "My Front Porch Looking In" received 162,519 spins.

The upshot is that even though people still discover their music from radio, radio has a much tighter playlist overall. It seems to be a case where the 1% of the music industry is profiting more than ever, while the 99% has a harder road to travel yet again.

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Help support this blog. Any purchases made through our Amazon links help support this website with no cost to you.

Follow me on Forbes for some insights on the new music business.

You should follow me on Twitter and Facebook for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

Check out my Big Picture blog for discussion on common music, engineering and production tips and tricks.

My "Future Of The Music Business" Interview

Here's an interview that I did with my friend Slawek Blich regarding the future of the music business. If you read this blog frequently, you know that I'm very optimistic about where things are going, and this article points out why. The interview was originally for a Polish publication, but was also published in Forbes International, then AudioPro International.

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Help support this blog. Any purchases made through our Amazon links help support this website with no cost to you.

Follow me on Forbes for some insights on the new music business.

You should follow me on Twitter and Facebook for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

Check out my Big Picture blog for discussion on common music, engineering and production tips and tricks.