There is much more to be gained from YouTube beyond the first layer of YouTube monetization covered by your distributor. A few tweaks and a little effort, and you can see a substantial bump in revenue from your catalog. These five ideas are simple, helpful places to start.
1. Good Things Don’t Come to Those Who Wait
YouTube is the #1 music discovery site in the world, so that means a lot of YouTubers are using your music in their videos––and making money from your content. YouTube can’t collect retroactively, so time is of the essence. Get your latest release into YouTube Content ID as soon as possible, preferably before the release date. If the album leaks, you’ll be covered. Same goes for any previous releases––you never know when an older song will become popular with YouTubers.
2. Don’t Set it and Forget It
Most digital distributors include YouTube monetization. But once your songs are in YouTube Content ID, distributors leave it up to the automated system to do most of the work. To get the most bang for your buck, make sure to use an aggregator that has the ability to manually claim videos for you.
3. Use Robust Metadata
Your PRO should be collecting YouTube performance money for you, but a lot of it is not collected due to missing or incomplete metadata. Check with your YouTube aggregator to make sure they are able to create composition assets for you, and if so, be sure to provide them with as much metadata as you can. This will make it easier for your PRO to identify and collect for you.
4. Build Your Channel and Build Awareness
If you don't have a channel for you or your artists, make sure to create one! The videos can simply be still images of album artwork with songs playing on top, and also any vlog or behind the scenes content. Having a channel will generate subscribers, views, and your overall online presence. Once you have 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 hours of watch time, then you're eligible to monetize your audiovisual content, which provides yet another revenue stream.
5. Submit Albums for YouTube Red Streaming
In addition to your YouTube Content ID revenue, you can also stream your albums through YouTube Red. Your distributor and/or aggregator can take your high res jpg album artwork and high res wav files to create Art Tracks. Instead of scanning and claiming YouTube videos using your music, Art Tracks create stand-alone videos for streaming purposes only. This will give you two sources of YouTube revenue.
JESSE WORSTELL is VP of Rights Management at AdRev, which services companies that need help in maximizing their YouTube revenue. AdRev is the leader in the space, paying out millions to its clients. See adrev.net.
