Americana Master Class: YouTube, Spotify, BandPage

Sessions at the 2014 Americana Festival and Conference included a Master Class series covering YouTube, Spotify and BandPage.

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Pictured (L-R): Margaret Hart and Jessica Frech.

Thursday’s (Sept. 18) YouTube session featured Margaret Hart of Google’s YouTube Music and Jessica Frech, a musician. Monetizing advice was excluded, rather tips for driving viewership were discussed. The publically-available presentation outlined Top Strategies for Music Artists and Album Promotion.

Since February 2013, YouTube has been integrated with specific Billboard charts, so YouTube views are pertinent to multiple aspects of an artist’s promotion.

Album teasers/samplers/trailers have benefited some artists “likes” as much as five-time above average, and two-times as much for sharability.

Lyric and Audio Videos considered a pre-music video.“You have to remember YouTube is the second largest search engine behind Google,” says Hart. “If you don’t create a lyric or audio video, someone else will and you may not like the quality and you would miss out on bring those fans to your own channel.” Annotations allow pop-up features to draw viewers to, perhaps, more current videos as a release cycle unfolds.

Optimizing Videos includes those pop-up Annotations, driving users to relevant links. Hart expects annotations will be updated soon. In-video programming offers thumbnails for hovering to subscribe. Searchable titles are crucial, which Fiech notes the artist name should be included at the end of the title. Tags can be saved in settings for automatic insertion, improving SEO. Metadata, on and off YouTube, should also be maintained, including UPC codes and proper registration with Musicbrainz, Freebase, AllMusic, Songkick or Wikipedia.

Video Playlists should be shared in leu of linking to just one video, advised Frech. Playlists automatically roll through to increases views. “This all contributes to ‘watch time,’ which is really important to us,” says Hart of her Google-owned company. One band experienced over 25-percent of views through playlists.

Channel Design involves filling blank space on your channel, primarily as it pertains to the description in your welcome video. “Fill the white space,” says Hart. “That central section is your video description but it takes up half the page.” Add shelves below to organize videos into categories (live, behind-the-scenes, etc.).

Upload Regularly, at least once a month. “Fans wouldn’t subscribe if they weren’t interested in receiving your content,” said Hart. Spice up your channel with behind the scenes, how-to, even Google+ hangouts can be exported to your channel if fans are answering pertinent questions. “Think outside music,” advised Hart, who mentioned Jason DeRulo’s dance tutorials for his single, which was “on the tail-end of its radio life but was still receiving millions of YouTube views. Listen to what fans are talking about. If it’s makeup, put up a video about how to do makeup.”

Collaborations allow pools of fans exposure to new talent. Hunter Hayes and Jason Mraz recorded “Everybody’s Got Somebody But Me” at YouTube’s studio space with eight other YouTube stars to reach each’s fan base.

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Pictured (L-R): Ty Jacobson, Copeland Isaacson.

Copeland Isaacson, Spotify’s representative for Americana Country and Christian in Nashville spoke alongside Ty Jacobson of partner company BandPage, on Friday (Sept. 19).

Spotify was added to as one of BandPage’s syndicated partner networks in August. Artists are able to maintain bios, photos and merch for a variety of additional partners including Shazam, YouTube, iHeartRadio, Rdio, SoundCloud, etc.

Spotify, with its 46-million active users worldwide (12-million paying subscribers) claims click-through rates in the 3-4 percent, higher than rates seen from banner ads or Facebook posts.

Most of the afternoon session pertained to store items for BandPage, of which three items pull to Spotify to take advantage of those click-through rates. BandPage requires a PayPal sellers account, however it does not charge any additional fee beyond that. “BandPage does not fulfill orders,” explained Jacobson. “We send fan-facing email confirmations and have support for fans.” But artists are responsible for fulfillment and customer support.

Internally, the streaming site relies on its own Viral 50 chart, computed by plays divided by the number of shares. “We’ll reach out to indie artists and their teams to learn more about them,” said Isaacson. Of note, Spotify biographies are pulled from AllMusic, while SongKick pulls in tour dates.

“Playlisting is a huge tool on Spotify,” explained Isaacson. Whether curated by Spotify teams, or artists for their own pages, “It’s basically a mix-tape,” he continued. An audience member raised their hand to suggest their artist streams were up from 500 to 7500 after inclusion in a Spotify-curated playlist. “Spotify is an incredible driver and we’re just trying to replicate the success stories,” concluded Isaacson. More artist information here.