 There's this quote from science fiction writer William Gibson that the future's already here, it's just not evenly distributed. If there's one thought that I see that nearly everyone except for those who get it, is that YouTube is the biggest place musicians should be concentrating on. In every single genre, I don't care what type of music you make, this is the case. Yet nearly every musician is ignoring it and not using YouTube to its full extensive. But let's back up. There's a reason I started this video with a science fiction writer's quote, and it's not because I want to show you I'm a fucking dweeb. It's that five years from now everyone in music is going to realize how important it is to utilize many of the strategies that YouTubers do to make their audience and fans excited about them because YouTube is the easiest place to build deep bonds with fans. In this video I'm going to show you a lot of good examples of how you can be using YouTube to connect with your audience. Hi, I'm Jesse Cannon, this is Muse Formation. Most people don't even get how big YouTube is. Do you know that if you combine Apple Music, Spotify, and every other music platform, YouTube still has more music played on it every day? In 2018 it made up almost half of all-on-demand streaming time. It's the second biggest search engine and now 25% of Google searches show videos. And most of all, YouTube is still the number one place listeners discover new music. But it's also where potential fans consider how your aesthetic and your looks actually figure into their life and how they're going to bond with you. But the real fact is even the biggest artists in music today aren't connecting with audiences on YouTube the way they can. But probably even 10 years from now when everyone gets a clue and realizes what they have been missing out, that YouTube is the biggest opportunity for musicians, they're all going to realize that this was a big opportunity loss. Now if you've watched my previous videos, I want to say that if you're not employing the three YouTube method I discussed before, you are failing your song and it's potential anyway. But that's actually not what we're going to talk about today because I've beaten that horse extensively. What I want to talk about is the only people who are harnessing the power of what YouTube can do are corny ass YouTuber dorks. And that distinction right there is what I want to talk about. Is there's people who concentrate on making music and being a popular musician, not just making YouTube videos and being big on YouTube. I'm going to show you a bunch of examples of artists who are doing YouTube well and are making that distinction that they are musicians first and YouTuber second. But you may be thinking, Jesse if I'm on YouTube aren't I a YouTuber just like you? I think most of the musicians watching this video care about being a musician way more than a YouTube star. If you watch the first video in this series, you know I lean really hard on this MTV study that says fans support the artists they feel closest connections with. And YouTube is the easiest place to form those connections. The fact is YouTube offers the best tools to effectively show fans who you really are and build those bonds with them so they support you. Since videos show exactly who you are and potential fans are willing to take more time into YouTube than anything else except for podcasts. But I want to talk going beyond just making great music videos and the occasional behind the scenes video. Sure, that's easy to talk about. I mean if you want to get inspired, let's talk about Pup. Their channel is filled with the most creative and interesting punk videos for a band that sounds like them. Poppy obviously has some of the best produced music videos you'll ever see but they're not exactly affordable for most groups. Buff Carell, sure he's the best dancer in the world and boy what a good singer. Tira Wack, it's an amazing concept video stringing all the songs together the way she did. The artist Umi has been releasing her EP episodically which is a fantastic idea. But none of this is what I actually want to talk about today. What I want to talk about here is how you show yourself in more than just music videos. I want to talk about what else you can be doing aside from music videos to show yourself and build the bond's fans value with you to build up your fan base and keep you on top of fans minds so they remember to tell all their friends about you. First I want to start with the artist Cave Town who I've been lucky enough to master some records for. He has over a million subscribers and one of the things he does best is really express vulnerability. He also does cute collaboration videos with friends singing along to songs he likes. When he does a video and he hasn't done one in a long time, if he talks about it doesn't feel authentic unless he's doing this all the time because he's so used to talking to his fans on a regular basis and then telling everyone who he actually is. He's an incredible artistic mind showing all sorts of sides to him and really talks to fans like they are his friends, like no artist I've seen on YouTube. He's even vulnerable enough to talk about really rare subjects like his aromanticism and a wide variety of other topics. He breaks down his production techniques and shares everything and seems to be an open book of what his world looks like which makes his extremely personal music even more authentic. So you might be saying doesn't this make him a YouTuber but right here in this interview with Billboard you can see he refers to himself as a musician first and a YouTuber second. Next up we have Bill Murray, no not the actor Bill Murray but B-I-L-M-U-R-I. He does all sorts of awesome things and really shows a personality on here and you really feel like you know him when you watch his YouTube channel. He's making commercials and satires his place in music and makes album announcements that are highly personal and shows personality yet also feel like the vibe of his music. If I wanted to use a silly word I would call it synergistic, but that seems a little weird to describe the dude parodying his old band Attack Attack with a song called Thick Thickly but also that song fucks. Brock Hampton, now you may be saying Jesse come on they are banned with the number one record but let's talk about what they first started out doing. During their first four records or so they would start each video with nearly the same thing. Some skit of them goofing off and showing who they are which is a bunch of kids who met on the internet who love Kanye West and being creative and wild. They made a predictable format of each of their music videos each time they released one but with a theme that would set the stage to show who they are it's something more that showed their personality each time a fan tuned in. Yaris Hanna recently twitch streamed the recording of her new record. She knows she's an incredibly badass musician and can sit on camera and extensively talk about how she creates. But while you're probably thinking hey old man twitch and youtube aren't the same Hanna really uploads her twitch content where she connects to her fans onto youtube and that's a good lesson. She bite sizes the best of her album records and Q&As she does on twitch and moves them back over to youtube. She makes best of videos for each week while she's on twitch and then she uploads the full day of content from twitch to youtube as well. But most of all she made a huge commitment to do a long term bonding with her fans which you can easily learn the lesson to do on youtube and then use technology to do something cool and unique with it and she's showing that you can always repurpose content from one platform to another especially when it's showing who you are and creating deep bonds with fans. Next we have Chloe Moriando who has over 2.5 million subscriptions and who I've been lucky enough to mix and master some stuff from. Chloe literally sits in her bedroom doesn't bother to clean it up and speaks honestly about what's going on in her life why she loves a song or why she wrote it seemingly one minute after she hit rolling on the camera she'll have what she's going to do down. She's the best example I know of of that opening up and talking about your songs can really create bonds with people. She shows exactly who she is and shows her personality and it's connecting with people and I think she rules. Tessa Violet not only is one of the best at sharing her stream of conscious thoughts she makes incredible music videos that fit her songs super well and seems to blend well with the behind the scenes stuff she does when she vlogs. One noticeable thing about Tessa and Chloe is they talk to their fans like they're their close friends just like I was saying with cave town. In fact she even does videos where she talks to her close friends and you get the vibe of who she is and you get to peer into what her life really is like in her most honest moments with her friends. The band against the current famously built up some of their fan base by uploading makeup videos. As a female fronted band sharing this commonality in makeup with much of their fan base enabled them to find another way to bond with their fans. The artist Dead Mouse is obviously one of the biggest ones in the world but his techniques are easily emulated. He does these coffee run videos where he'll interview somebody while they drive and get coffee. He even would go out with the mayor of Toronto Rob Ford. RIP to a real one. He does tons of tutorials on how to make music since so much of his audience is music makers and he bonds with them by showing them exactly what he's doing because he has the confidence to know that no matter how many secrets he gives away he's just rebonding with fans because no one can emulate his level of talent. A lot of the essence of this is finding out who you are as a personality and aesthetic which we're going to talk much more about later. You need to think about who you are and how you build other bonds with fans. Maybe if you and a bunch of other friends bands are all into slasher flicks you can make a low budget week by week episodic movie where you all start in, you unveil the plot to it and then do a premiere at the end to show you all play together. I want you to sit down and think about what your other interests are especially if you're in a band really has your personality and how you can make other content on YouTube that will help you engage and bond with fans. And let's lastly remember what's important is you do this consistently. Let's always remember consistent sustained promotion is what works. If you find something working on YouTube you need to deliver at the same frequency whether that's weekly, bi-weekly, monthly or whatever it needs to be so that it's consistent. Look around at the artists you love think about what makes you glued to them and then think about how you can make videos that draw you in just the way your favorite bands have drawn you in and then think about how you can do the same. That's it. Am I missing anything? Is there any way you would have done this? I need to know your questions and what no one else is telling you since I want to answer them so leave them in the comments. I hope you liked this video and if you did please like and subscribe and get notified for my future videos since I'm going to be breaking down the concepts in this video along with tons of others on promoting your music and how to make music you're more happy with. As well, I have a Facebook group that's linked below that has only helpful information. No one tried to sell you anything, playlists or con artists only helpful information for musicians looking to be better themselves. If you want to learn more about me, make a record with me or check out any of my books, podcasts or anything else I do head to jessicanon.com or at jessicanon.com on any of the socials. Thanks for watching. One last thing, if you liked this video, there's two playlists here with tons more videos that you'll probably enjoy. One's about how you promote your music and the other's about how you make songs you're happy with. Otherwise you can hit the subscribe button here to see the rest of my videos. Thanks so much for watching.