Quote from Jason EML Recordings on June 28, 2024, 9:23 am

Hi All,

Jason here, Wanted to share with you my experience of growing a YouTube channel, specifically for EDM Artists / Labels.

Why should you pay any attention to me ? well I've grown my channel from 850 subscribers to almost 11,000 in 6 months and with the method I use, there's no reason why I can't get to 100k in a few years time and you can do the same.

But it does come at a cost, so if you are not prepared to invest in yourself financially then this might not be the best post for you. I learned a long time ago that to get out, you have to first put in.

First off though, (shameless self promotion here), but here's an example of a music video I created a month ago for one of my own tunes so you can get an idea of what is possibe using my method : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-yE2AtdtrM

And here's an example of a Thumbnail I created for a different video.

To start with I'd like to explain the tools that I use for creating a music video on Youtube.

For the thumbnail and for many of the graphics in the video I of course use Canva.
Their Premuim subscription means there are no issues with copyright claims.

For the music visualisation and this is where the real magic happens I use https://app.videobolt.net/

This site is incredible and with a premium subscription every time you render a video it will give you the license with it, which you can use for commercial purposes.

If anyone was interested in a future post I could do a tutorial on how to use Video Bolt as it can be difficult to learn, but the results are very much worth it.

Finally I use https://www.textstudio.com/
For those eye catching fonts on the thumbnail, again I have a premium subscription, but these three sites combined costs me only around £25 a month. I paid for a year up front with Videobolt and Text Studio as it's up to 60% cheaper in the long run to do it that way.

Finally you can either use something like CapCut for free as a video editor, Or Davinci Resolve,  but I use Video Pad NCH as it was a one off fee for life.

So those are the tools I use to create a video.

But there's so much more, once you have a video you need to make sure you are using the right title, description and keywords.

And that's something I find is very much hit and miss and there isn't really one solution that works, the best thing to do in my experience  is to be consistent with your hashtags, keywords and description and utilise Claude or Chat GPT. I could go into what prompts to use, to get the best results, but that would make this post far too long and again maybe thats a post for another day.

So that's all well and good, I have a decent music visualiser video with a catchy thumbnail, I might have added some ''subscribe to my channel' or some other 'call to action' in the video somewhere or in the description or title, just to try and get people to comment, but with music video's it's hard to really get people talking in the comments section, especially if it's a new music track, but there's another way to get engagement on youtube that has nothing to do with any of your video's and I'll explain that later.

 

You also need to choose the right settings on your video, but to cut it short, make sure your video is set to ''Not aimed at children'', switch off ''automatic chapters, automatic places and create a playlist and make sure you add your video to that playlist or playlists.

So you have your music video, it's up on youtube, you've done all the steps above and now you want it to reach an audience, sure you can post it on social media, share it with friends, maybe the description and thumbnail and keywords got you a few 100 plays, or maybe more, maybe youve gained a few new subscribers in the process, but it's going to tke you a LONG time to get to a point where you can monetise your channel.

So here's the most important part of all.

On your Youtube deashboard inside Youtube Studio, if you click on ''Content'' you'll see there is a section titled ''Promotions''

*You will need to have your own Google Ads account for this next step to work*

If you click on the promotions Tab, you can promote your videos within youtube itself , it will give you options, such as which video you want to pomote, how much you want to spend, you can select how long you want it to run for.

If you only pay attention to one part of this entire post make sure it's this bit coming up. 

You need to know your audience and you need to know where your potential audience is.

So this is where something like Chat GPT comes in handy again, if you ask Chat GPT to list the countries where your style of music you represent is popular AND BECOMING popular.

Then ask chat gpt to break that down into the specific areas within each country that the style of music you represent has a thriving scene or large number of nightclubs for example.

get that list and put it into the countries you want your music to be targetted towards, BUT and here's the most important part of ALL make sure that you only have 1 or 2 wealthy countries on your list and the rest should be countries less wealthy....why ??, because your money will go a LOT further.

For example, the video I linked you to above, I spent £5 on promotion, yes just a mere £5 and because I was really selective about where  (and who) I had that video targetted towards it got me an extra 3,000 plays and 50 new subscribers and remember this is advertising through youtube itself, not a 3rd party platform that will charge you £50 for the same results.

Finally use the community tab, maybe upload some different artwork ideas for your next release and ask people to vote for which one they like the most, visual polls seem to do better than text polls.

We ALL put time into making tunes ,  god so much time, but not many of us invest our hard earned cash. But many of us don't think twice about ordering a pizza or a takeaway / takeout.

so the next time your considering spending £20 or more for a extra large pizza, maybe have a think bout what that £20 could be doing for you instead.

Thanks for reading.

Jay