YouTube- the world’s best hosting platform
When we see the signage (see embed below) we all know that people all over the world are hooked to this video channel with hours of watching of posted videos by the people all across the world. The video hosting services on world wide web (www) was founded first here in California some time in the year of 2005 and an India YouTube officially started in 2008. A small business started in a makeshift office above a Pizzeria in San Mateo, California by three youngsters named YouTube was founded by Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim. grew into a 1.65 billion worth internet business as purchased by google in 2006 which everyone now know was googles most smartest purchase till date. YouTube is roughly estimated between 10-15 billion in worth as today and still growing.
All of founders Chad, Steve and Jawed all came from best colleges across united States. Two Asians who are the founding members of which Jawed is born to a Bengali parents and is an Alma mater of Stanford and University of Urbana, Champagne campus, Illinois. He is the very first person to have a video posted on a YouTube video in the whole of the history. Funded by angel funds the company grew to become one of the most fastest growing company base its use on WWW internet.
Why this medium is the Key to your Success as a singer in modern age?
That much to say a little background about the YouTube. The aim of this article is to provide singers who are on Smule looking to develop a career and keep thinking that he / she need to be there 24 hrs in front of his or her audience, please read on….
We interview many young singers and the success rate of selecting a singer for a feature here stress one criteria a lot that is “how serious this singer looking to develop a career as a singer?” Some clearly bring to our notice about their YouTube channel link. We look at them and it is really a bad scene there most of the time. Sorry to say this. Even the good singers have no clue how to run a YouTube channel to their benefit.
So our friends here wanted to research on this and discuss how one singer can get noticed in a highly competent video posting techniques used by big Bollywood media tycoons; like T-series whose advertisement department have the success agenda to get the attention of 1.324 billion people who are addicted to cinema and the music industry associated with it. The first step was to analyze what trends in India YouTube. Obviously many times Bollywood music industry takes the precedence over the smaller video productions. Our write up is an experimental attempt to see what might work and in no way is a recipe for success. But wanted to present a lot of work done behind by friends looking through the YouTube India channels and what they found.
We already have published several previous special features about independent singers and their YouTube channels and what made them noticed. If you need to see them see the following links (Read the special feature sections especially at the end of Darini Hariharan, Aishwarya Krishna and Sanjay Santhosh features)
(Darini Hariharan – true representation of India’s 21st century singers-special mention Sreelakshmi
Top 10 Punjabi female singers of recent times
Aishwarya Krishna-the youngest prodigy featured Singer &
Sanjay Santhosh Cherian- a singing prodigy)
Is it that Seriously an Important part of success?
Simple answer is Yes, there is a lot of people out there with similar talent like yours or even better than yours is ready to grab that opportunity to take that seat. The competition is intense and your success depends on how well you market yourselves. Are you going to sit in that corner and hope you are going to be discovered. Unfortunately those days are gone. Music directors are increasingly young in age and their media dependency is ever more increasing and we discussed about this in one of our previous feature. See here.
Here we start by surveying the YouTube trends in music videos from India. There are no surprises. We went on a search of the top ten music videos watched. This is an interesting analysis done to understand more about the algorithm that runs on the search engine of YouTube. When one search a term what appears on the top ten list is either depend on your account where you keep adding songs and videos to your favorite list. This analysis take the advantage of common sense and understanding of YouTube search engine to see what might be the most intelligent ways to have a video show up on the side bar in the play list.
Strategies used: We logged out of all email accounts that we have subscription to YouTube so that our search on the video represent the general trend of the top videos that we are searching; and we assumed Chrome and the Google search engine as the current most popular browser and search engine used by majority of computer educated youngsters.
Method:
Find a reliable source to assess a top ten list music videos of the last year.
Type the top video title into a chrome internet browser google search engine and click the link to the YouTube link of that video. Look through the top ten hits and identify three other videos that showed up other than particular Bollywood video searched for and analyze how they happen to be the most appeared videos along with the most hit Bollywood videos. Analyze any common trends and report the results and discuss it.
We are only discussing here the Top 5 Music Videos of 2017 India music:
1)Badri Ki Dulhania (Title Track)
Top other videos appeared along this video that appear on a search unbiased by personal preferences to the user. The first dance video have 4.1 million hits, the second one have 2.7 million views and the third one have 904 K views.
Analysis: All the videos appeared along with the hit track used the same title ditto as in the above video i.e. “Badri ki Dulhania, Title Track, |Bollywood|Choreography|Dance etc are added to the title to get to the correct career aspiration audience. The third video also used Varun amd Alia’s name which is also key during the last year as the most sought out pair on screen. Also all hit videos showed up are all dance videos, so tell volumes people in India love hearing a song along dances. Still traditions stayed the same in this century. So to make your music interesting add this element, or use any eye catching elements to it.
Second Top music video of 2017: Tamma Tamma again
The top other video showed up along the second topper is no surprise they all used word by word the same title for their videos. Ditto. The first video here is viewed by 3.2 Million (starting with a letter M, wow). The first place taken by these three more famous chipmunks ( 11 million views)
A more creative and super enjoyable video by these dancers 1.3 million views. Likability is another factor for success. No cheesy stuff means people will watch it.
206 K views. The same recipe use the same words with out fail and use the name of Varun Dhavan. The videos are short to the extent they all are about a minute and half with high amount of editing and presentation styles and lots of links about their other media foot print.
3) Third position as expected goes to this new sensation from Punjabi music
It is very hard for anybody else to catch up with this highly popular Punjabi singer Guru Randhawa videos, because he occupied everything possible with hundreds of his own videos as popular as his original hit. Yet for a change let us look at a video that caught attention of about 1.2 millions. The story is if there is some youngsters story attached to your song it is destined to be popular. Why, it is them who spend the most time on the YouTube channel watching. Remember Malayalam’s last year hit Manikya Malaraya Poovi, Controversy keep selling everywhere. Again the Naach team as said in the following video gives out their success story simple and straight. Listen
4) Ding Dang – Video Song
Surprisingly this video override any other small video production by other users by Tiger Shroff’s own videos on his physique and stage performances. He is super dancer many compare to Michael Jackson and like. His publicity manager is big time behind this kid that works so beautifully in favor of him. Yet that in itself is an evidence how some of the big time Bollywood stars are promoted on YouTube
5) Mere Raskke Qamar
This video posted by Neha herself and promoted by herself hit an amazing viewership for this otherwise such small feat. 113, 831.513 views.OMG. Who can beat Nusrat and Rahat Faeth Ali khan’s popularity. So be away from all that if possible. But Neha proved everyone wrong here.
Next two videos are from Abroad that hit India big time, partly because of Ed Sheeran’s India visit and celebrity acquaintance.
6) Ed Sheran -Shape of You
It is pretty hard to follow such international popular numbers worldwide there are many other singer and dancers have taken the top videos in the top ten most hit. No Bollywood match yet for Hollywood.
7) Luis Fonsi -Despacito ft. Daddy Yankee
The same is the case if you want to sing a song and make a video to go world wide popular it is still not a simple task for even a Bollywood based production. It is totally a different equation out there. Luis Fonsi the super duper star took precedence with Justin Beeber and Charlie Puth vidoes took the other videos hit along with this video. Thus no conclusion is reached about what is going on here. We are confused ourselves.
In a next analysis series we will analyze the all time India top videos and the trend of smaller video posts that achieve the success of million views.
Discussion:
The most critical question: Is there some simple must rules for success on YouTube channel that we can conclude from this analysis? Yes here are few pointers but not exclusive.
Rule 1) Want people to spend a part of their time to watch your YouTube video along side some block buster video productions? Make it short, No more than two minutes. Once you have a popular video you may make any longer versions that your fans will not mind watching you
Rule 2) The right title words on your videos, it is all about that. The search engines looking for only that. Identify the video that is promoted by the original song promotion. Write your video title ditto
Rule 3) Hash tag # look at the hashtags on the master videos, copy ditto on your posting.
Rule 4) You are trying to make your video visible by following all the above three rules; yet do not forget that you have to give all information about you in the video so that people who think you are good will be able to find more about you. Think the links given have to be carefully checked for spell errors etc.
Rule 5) Do not tell people that you have YouTube, Instagram, Facebook and Sound cloud accounts if you do not know how those platforms might be properly used for your advantage. People interested in your music definitely do not want to see your child’s school pics and random travel pics and photos when they visit those links (unless you are already a celebrity). Be professional in every manner if you are claiming you are a musician.
Rule 6) Any search engine pick up your foot print on web based on the keywords your website or accounts have. If you are a Sufi singer, make a visit to the most famous singer of that genre web page (almost all of them have one today) and see what makes his page visible most when search engines are looking for. Patch your sites descriptions with the same keywords that the most popular song title have. You will see the magic happens.
Rule 7) Any offer to be on web and talk about you by someone else is a great opportunity to show yourself to others. Never shy away from such offers. No matter how small it may be.
END NOTES
We only know a little bit about the marketing side of YouTube success. We built a simple format for an audience that might be interested to work on their channels. YouTube will provide you online chat time with your followers if your channel cross certain number followers or certain hours of watching on web of your videos. Work hard towards it. It gives a lot more credibility for you to be lead the way easily. You do not have to have this as first goal to be most viewed videos. There are many examples otherwise. Facebook is a medium that may be used effectively. But many times singers have all sort of stuff on their Facebook page. If you are going to use it for your music try to design it for the purpose only. Be professional in every manner you can. There is no excuse to be sloppy in the entertainment business. Decide how you want to project your persona and stick with a plan. Do not change your looks random. People are looking for familiarity. Random changes unless you decided a new path to begin is a disaster guaranteed.
Happy reading and singing to all beautiful music friends who took their time to read our take on this. We are working more hard to find interesting marketing strategies on web and will be writing more on a second edition of this article in the coming months.Keep visiting and encouraging. Love you all.
by SIB team
The great India Singers on Smule Sing 