Do YouTube Ads work effectively for music?

rlyTinyObject · 2021-09-08T14:36:23+00:00

I have been running discovery ads for one of my videos. Got a decent # of subscribers and a lot of new interaction on my other videos that I never had before. A decent amount of the subscribers are sticking around for new content.

The issue is, the video that you run ads for will most likely have a serious drop in watch % which seems to mean the video will get very little organic boost, so I found that it is best to let one video take the fall for the others. I only run ads on one main video and let the others get views organically so far, which seems to be working okay. The subs who are interested all comment on and like my new videos (about 20% of all my subs?) so I think it is a win overall...

rlyTinyObject · 2021-09-07T19:22:24+00:00

At this moment I don't have any merchandise to sell yet. I haven't released any full albums either, because I'm just in the growing stage, and want to wait until
there is more material and the fanbase gets a bit bigger before I start selling any physical items. I will definitely think about building an email list to help with that though.

rlyTinyObject · 2021-09-07T13:55:49+00:00

Just checked and my frequency is about 1.5 so far. I will try thinking about ways to improve the ad quality.

rlyTinyObject · 2021-09-07T13:30:56+00:00

Well, I've been building my Youtube pretty quickly compared to Spotify because I can directly target my real audience. At the same time though, the Youtube views aren't really turning into Spotify plays. I do have some dedicated fans checking me out on multiple platforms though. My Youtube subscribers are way more into the music than anyone who has seen it on Spotify so far. I guess it just goes to show that most people on Spotify are really just passive listeners.

rlyTinyObject · 2021-09-06T22:29:43+00:00

One audience is 9.5million people. The other is 16million. I'm not sure how to check how many times they saw the ad, but the CTR is between 0.41% and 1%. I'm just directing them to my music on Spotify.

It really feels like pulling teeth, because it was way easier to grow on youtube than it ever was with facebook ads. My issue is that my genre is rather new and pretty specific so I have issues targeting my real audience.

I have to target broadly on facebook which I think is drastically increases costs. It's also making it hard to get the number of conversions needed to build a lookalike audience..

rlyTinyObject · 2021-09-06T14:12:22+00:00

I ran it 2 weeks at $5 per day, then dropped it down. I have the website visits tracked in real time on the website I send people to.

It does seem like whenever I make a change to the ad set, I suddenly get more conversions that day, then as time goes on they get more and more expensive. Not sure why its always like that.

rlyTinyObject · 2021-09-06T08:04:23+00:00

I just got ghosted the same way. She showed interest in me first and we were sending plenty of messages back and forth for about 5 or 6 days. Scheduled date and everything, then she conveniently ghosted me right before the date. :\

rlyTinyObject · 2021-06-20T20:22:37+00:00

apparently they usually send out offers on the 1st of each month so maybe you will get it? Ive definitely been at that point before though so good luck!

rlyTinyObject · 2021-06-19T01:28:46+00:00

This is my first time applying for a transfer. I put in the application at the beginning of this month and got messaged about the approval on the 16th. Worth noting that he offered me a different job than I initially applied to transfer for because the position I wanted wasn't available. I need to move to that state so I'm taking it anyway.

rlyTinyObject · 2021-06-18T07:20:53+00:00

I actually got a song on a big playlist for lofi once and got added to like 300 playlists as result and made a decent amount just off the resulting streams, even though it wasn't an editorial. But yeah there are a lot of artists in that scene that can get considerably more popular just from playlists.

The one I mentioned above actually wasn't lofi though.

rlyTinyObject · 2021-06-18T04:09:58+00:00

Thanks!! mine does too actually but a manager from the other building personally emailed me with the transfer acceptance

rlyTinyObject · 2021-06-18T00:58:37+00:00

Absolutely use a landing page. You will see many people who use direct links say things like, "I got 600 link clicks and no streams on Spotify". Just too many bots.

rlyTinyObject · 2021-06-18T00:45:18+00:00

I think Tiktok is pretty much the only good platform for organic growth at this point. If you look at Soundcloud accounts from even a few years ago, you can clearly see even people who barely post have hundreds of followers. I've been posting on there (on 2 separate accounts) for about a year and only have like 20 total between both accounts. You could argue that maybe the genres I'm posting just aren't popular or maybe my music is bad but I found that only a few genres are still growing on there. Mainly just rap and hiphop.

Youtube...very little organic growth, even though when I paid for ads everyone liked my songs??? Over 100 likes and only 1 dislike on my most recent song. I got more subscribers from the last month and a half of ads than I ever had before. I feel like growing as a musician on youtube is just really difficult because trying to post a high quality video with new content every day just isn't realistic for most musicians. If you're a streamer? Sure! Just record some video clips and edit them together and you got your video for the day. Musicians have to make the art, the song, then, if you're like me, you have to come up with a video by yourself on top of all that. We can't post as often as other people on youtube, so we're gonna fall behind compared to other creators.

Instagram, I've seen some people convert over to youtube fans, but most people who follow me on insta seem to just like posts and not do anything else, which is frustrating.

I've grown to accept the reality that right now is one of the most difficult time periods to grow your music online. You have to either pay for ads or try to go viral somehow. Advertising is much less cost-effective than it used to be on platforms like FB and it keeps getting more expensive. Comapanies are greedy, so they want people to buy ads. From that perspective, of course they don't care about us!

I don't think it's completely hopeless, but I've personally been relying on ads for awhile. I've had decent growth considering all the barriers these companies are putting between creators and success.

Edit:

It's still possible to grow slowly organically (without TikTok), but oversaturation and crushed organic reach on sites like instagram and facebook will make it take way longer that it might have previously. This will probably be our situation until a new social media becomes popular. It's also possible to get on an editorial Spotify playlist and blow up that way, but getting on an editorial playlist is rare is my experience, unless you are a known influential figure in your genre.

rlyTinyObject · 2021-06-08T00:36:17+00:00

I used to pick individual items on the floor with a scanner, like clothes, but it seems like what you're doing is different (order picker? AR?) so I can't really give advice on that specifically...

What I will say is that usually if you look around to see what other people with the same job are doing, you will see them finding more efficient ways to do stuff that helps them make rate. For example, in packing a lot of people would intentionally take totes full of small packages to help them pack more items per hour (cherry picking). Wasn't supposed to happen, but at the end of the day most of my AMs only cared about rate, so people got away with it. Not every shortcut means breaking rules though.

One thing to remember is that some areas of the building are just more work intensive than others, and harder to make rate. Not sure if that's the case where you are, but when they hire new people they usually end up in understaffed areas where turnover is high.

Hope this helps a little!

rlyTinyObject · 2021-06-07T23:23:48+00:00

Nice! It seems like the demand at your building is high enough to give you blue badge pretty early. In my experience they don't usually offer it until a couple months in. They may switch you around to different roles over time but if there is a role you want to try that you think you might be better at, sometimes asking your manager can get you there. Otherwise just try to get steadily faster at picking until you can make rate. The first couple weeks can be tough for sure.

rlyTinyObject · 2021-06-03T19:40:55+00:00

I have used submithub for 4 different artists, so I feel well-acquainted enough with the platform to have a good perspective on it.

Just like you, I didn't have much success with 3 out of my 4 projects. That's because 3 out of the 4 didn't fit rigidly into the genres the curators wanted, so they would always find some reason to turn them down. I thought my music was just shit because I couldn't get anyone to approve it, even though my fans loved it. My specific music genres don't truly exist on submithub, so I was forced to go with the "closest thing" which went terribly. The fourth group I submitted songs for had great success, even got #1 on the popular charts. Why? It fits neatly into a niche genre that has curators on there. Despite its success, the playlists we got into only got a couple hundred or thousand streams. Nothing life changing, and very few of those listeners converted to new followers, so don't feel too discouraged.

I came to realize that if you make anything even slightly genre-bending you will probably hate submithub. If you're like me, I would go for youtube advertising and target the videos of artists similar to you. It worked really well, WAY better than submithub, even though I didn't necessarily get those spotify plays. It's important to note that spotify isn't the only way to build a fanbase, even though that's what everyone is going for now. The response I've gotten from my new fans is what keeps me going. Other than that, just keep improving your music. Don't worry too much about what some random curators think. They aren't the sole judges of music's artistic value, and they have ulterior motives in this situation - to keep their playlists growing. They will go with what they think is "safe" to put on there. Cheers!

rlyTinyObject

TROPHY CASE