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Unleash your music to billions! YouTube is a powerful platform for musicians to reach new audiences and build a fanbase.

YouTube is a natural place to upload your music. It’s an open platform that is freely available for both creators and viewers. With more than two-and-a-half billion users, there is a huge potential audience on YouTube waiting to hear your music.

However, it’s not just as simple as uploading your music and getting heard (if only!). There is more to do to maximise your reach and give your new release the best chance at finding its full potential.

So, how do you stand out in the crowd? Let’s dive into strategies to make your music release a YouTube sensation.

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Understand Your Audience: Craft your content to them

Before you hit that upload button, it’s vital to truly understand your target audiences. (More on how to do that at the end).

Who are you trying to reach? What kind of music do they like? This knowledge will guide your content creation and marketing efforts.

Whilst your creation should be meaningful to you, if you want to be successful you also need to make it for your audience too.

Visual Appeal: A captivating music video or lyric video can instantly hook viewers. Invest in high-quality visuals that complement your music’s vibe.

Diverse Content: Don’t limit yourself to music videos. Experiment with behind-the-scenes footage, live performances, acoustic versions, and even short documentaries.

Collaborate: Partnering with other artists or influencers can expand your reach and introduce your music to new audiences.

How to optimise your music release on YouTube

Now it’s time to create and release that content, you want to get it right. Make sure you have high quality audio and video that does justice to your music. Consider FLAC audio and HD video.

If you’re uploading a music video directly to YouTube, make sure it’s complete and of the quality you wanted to release. Use YouTube Content ID to ensure you earn from plays on your music video – find more on that further down!

If you’re uploading a track for streaming instead, consider distributing through RouteNote to upload to YouTube Music and YouTube, earning revenues from your plays.

Add a compelling title: The rules are slightly different for music, so just your artist name and track title will do. Extra details can help your optimisation, like putting ‘Music Video’ or ‘Cover’ in brackets if relevant and adding genre tags.

Design a captivating thumbnail: This draws viewers in. It may seem tempting to just fall back on YouTube’s tools that let you pick a frame from your video as the thumbnail. However, the thumbnail can be one of your most powerful tools. Along with the title, it’s the first thing viewers will see and will decide whether they want to click on it to find out more or not.

Write a detailed description: This allows more detail about your release. This is a great place to give dedicated fans more information about the release or give more context to the content that enhances the appreciation of it. This is also a fantastic place to add links to your social media and other releases.

Smaller actions can still help give your video a little boost, like adding relevant tags and selecting the right category for your content. Make sure that as well as your video, your channel is optimised with images and accurate information/names.

Content-ception: Maximise your content with more content

Don’t be fooled, your release isn’t the one and only piece of content you’re going to want to make in your release strategy. In fact, it’s just one of many pieces that you want to make that will accompany it to drive it further.

You can promote your release with loads more content on your YouTube channel:

  • Music videos
  • Behind-the-scenes content
  • Alternate versions of your release
  • YouTube Shorts snippets and originals
  • Interviews
  • Music making tips & tricks
Content Marketing for Musicians

Whilst you can maximise engagement with extra content that leads viewers towards your main release, be aware of not spamming and damaging your algorithm with low-quality content for the sake of it.

Use your new song in different ways to pull different types of viewers towards it. With Billie Eilish’s recent release, she posted various different Shorts singing her song with different approaches to keep her promotion of the same song interesting.

Plan Ahead: Content plans that work

Thinking ahead allows you to strategise your efforts to maximise their effect. It also makes it easier to understand what you’re going to do so that creating and posting is easier when the time comes.

Make a content plan that helps you to schedule what and when you’re going to release. You want to build hype for your release in the lead up to the day it drops as well as keeping the momentum going by posting regular content after it’s released.

Pre-release strategy:

  • Post snippets of your song
  • Post images of behind-the-scenes
  • Post videos working on it
  • Post clips of your music video
  • Use pre-saves

Release day strategy:

  • Share your links on social media
  • Use smart links to share all platforms easily
  • Re-brand your pages to highlight the new release
  • Go live or drop companion content like a music video to increase clicks and engagement around your new release

Post-release strategy:

  • Engage with the community:
    • Respond to comments to show fans you care and create lasting connections
    • Ask viewers to like, comment, share, and subscribe to spread the word
    • Encourage covers of your new release
    • Challenge fans to a trend that uses your song on TikTok, Shorts, and Reels
    • Host events that allow fans to interact with you
    • Run contests, giveaways or challenges to foster a sense of community
  • Share your new release a few more times for those who might have missed it on release day

Make Your Mark: Earn more with Content ID

Add your new music to YouTube Content ID so that you can encourage others to share your music and increase your exposure whilst earning revenues at the same time!

Content ID is YouTube’s tool for detecting audio in videos. It’s how they both protect musicians and also allow creators the freedom to use the music that they love as soundtracks.

When YouTube detects audio that’s in their Content ID library they will ensure the revenues from that video are directed towards to the rightsholders of the music. This allows creators to use music with copyright issues but keeps you getting paid as your music spreads across YouTube.

You can add your music to the Content ID library easily and for free at www.routenote.com to start earning on other people’s videos.

Level-Up Social Promo: PUSH.fm

The very best marketing tools don’t need to be stuck behind a paywall. Our friends over at PUSH.fm offer a powerful suite of promotional tools and they’re available at no cost.

Get started with new promotional tools to advance your reach and engagement for free at PUSH.fm.

Smart Links: Bring all your links together into one place for an easy share that reaches everyone at once. This is great for releases that are available on different music services, allowing you to share your link for each of them with just one URL.

Reward Links: Give something special and get guaranteed growth in return! These links allow you to offer something (tickets, coupons, exclusive audio, more!) in return for a social engagement like a subscribe or email address.

There are many more exciting tools to discover on PUSH.fm like Pre-Saves, Competitions, and in-depth analytics to empower your career with.

They Think It’s All Over: Relax with a data-dive post-release

Once all of your content has been released and you’ve promoted like crazy, you can breathe and relax.

But, hold on! There’s still more you can do to maximise your potential in the future. Now you’re able to watch the engagement on your release and all of the promo you’ve released.

Regularly track your video’s performance using YouTube Analytics. Pay attention to metrics like views, watch time, likes, comments and shares.

Use this data to refine your strategy and create content that resonates with your audience. If one piece of content gets lots of views and another doesn’t then you know the type of content to prioritise.

You can also dive deep inside your audience statistics to find out where people are listening from and what sort of people they are. This data allows you to focus your efforts. For example, prioritising marketing in an area where you have lots of listeners or arranging tour dates based on your most popular regions.

By following these tips and consistently creating engaging content, you can increase your chances of making your music release a YouTube sensation and building a thriving fanbase.

Success on YouTube takes time and effort. Be patient, persistent, and always stay true to your artistic vision.