Wednesday, June 6, 2012
An Interesting Way to (Maybe) Monetize Your Music
So, next week, my latest album "Bruise" will be released. These days, it's an inevitability that, provided you've got a following of some sort, your music will be uploaded to YouTube by fans. Speaking with my friend Paul the other day, he mentioned that he had uploaded a video related to his interest in motorcycles some time ago and it ended up getting over 200,000 hits. YouTube contacted him offering the possibility of monetizing his video clip via ads. He had already made over a hundred bucks this way, simply for allowing some overlay ads. He suggested this might be something worth looking into for my album, since fans would upload it eventually anyway. So, I decided to do so and uploaded the entire album to YouTube. Obviously, I still have to pass the threshold of views to be eligible for monetization, but I think this will be quite an interesting experiment and a good possible option to raise some beer money for musicians who have a decent following.
What I can tell you so far is that the reaction from my fans has been overwhelmingly positive, and has really boosted my pre-orders. Whether this experiment results in any revenue from plays remains to be seen, but with the changing landscape of the music industry, professional musicians need to find new options for generating income.
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8 comments:
Now that you have an official channel, maybe load a couple other albums?
Personally, I think YouTube vids, even by well intentioned fans is still piracy of some form, but they are already on there anyway and some of your songs have over 10k hits. Better the artist load them and at least get a cut.
good luck, tom.
i agree with your model (as a musician myself)
and I can't get over how much you sound like front 242 / camouflage!
Definitely influences for sure!
I find that I'm immune to any type of google advert at this point. Clicking the X button as fast as I can for youtube videos.
I could be a minority... maybe many others find googleads useful? The only time they get clicked by me is by accident when I'm trying to close on a mobile device.
However, you're right that other fans will upload them anyways. So I think it would be beneficial for you to be the first to upload and share the album. That is one other youtube issue that commonly irks me the wrong way is when random uploaders are making money via ads on content they don't own...
Anyways please don't take my rant the wrong way. It has to do more with the google's adsense policies...
I think you are on the right idea/path about experimenting and exploring other avenues of revenue for the modern music professional.
Although it was clear from the start that I would buy your next album anyway, I think that this is great, brave and future-oriented of you, Tom! :-)
Recently, we had a discussion on Synthtopia about music pirating, where I represented the approach, that it is simply time for new marketing concepts instead of complaining that the old sale methods don't work anymore.
I'm really excited that you try something like this and I really wish you best luck for your sales!
Hopefully it will be a great example, how modern internet media sharing can be used in favor of artists who know how to use it!
Been listening to "Automaton" & "Over & Out" for the past two days almost constantly. Can't say I'm not doing my part, eh Tom? lol
Dunno, I toyed with this idea and then watched one of my videos with their advertising and hated myself.
I think this is a great idea, and I was curious whether that was actually your account on YouTube. People are going to put it up there anyway, so why not do it yourself and hopefully reap the benefits? PS I can't stop listening to Bruise, thanks for the great music.
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