Essay Example on Marketing Music on YouTube: The Ultimate Platform for Musicians

Introduction

YouTube is an American online video-sharing platform with its headquarters in the San Bruno California Music industry. It is a highly competitive one since artists compete with thousands of new artists. However, YouTube is not only a valuable platform but also a marketing platform to host their music. The tremendously popular video sharing platform is grounded zero for music marketing, and the first place one should post content. According to its mission to give everyone a voice and show them that the world by believing that everyone deserves a voice is evident, its hard work to promote music and the musicians. Users watch 1 billion hours of YouTube videos each day, with music being the most viewed video category by 27% ("Sound Charts," 2019). The platform has over 1 billion users, works with 80 different languages, the 2nd most engaged online site with most of its viewers in the 18 years to 34 age gaps compared to other websites. It allows users to upload, share, add playlists, report, view, and rate videos and subscribe to other users while offering a wide variety of corporate media and user-generated. Being a subsidiary of Google, which the number 1 most used online set makes YouTube worth considering in terms of marketing since there is no more massive reach online than the combined forces of YouTube and Google.

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History

The platform was launched in February 2005 by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim, who are the former PayPal employees of PayPal. It's domain name "YouTube.com" was activated on 14th February 2005 while the video upload options were integrated by 23rd April 2005. Its first video named 'Me at the zoo' was uploaded on 23rd April 2005, showing Jawed Karim at the San Diego. Since its launch in 2005, YouTube has significantly played a vital role in democratizing video distribution.

In the year 2006, YouTube became one of the fastest rising worldwide web sites. It delivered 100 million video views per day in July and around 20 M visitors per month, with 56% males and 44% female visitors. Further, it entered into a partnership with NBC in June 2006 and also dominated the UK video market by around 64%. The same year it was purchased by Google at the US $1.65 billion in stock. YouTube has since then emerged among the top online platform. It has also managed to partner with many companies such as CNN, Lions Gate Environment, MGM and CBS by allowing them to post full- length films and television episodes on the platform around 2007. Around 2010 it introduced streaming of precise contents such as cricket matches, which was the first worldwide free online program of a major sporting event. In the same year, Hurly stepped down as the chief executive officer to take an advisory role while Salar Kamar stepped up as the new chief executive officer. It was then integrated with Google+ and chrome browser allowing it to be viewed from Google+ and chrome interface in the year 2011, and by the year 2013, YouTube had surpassed the PewDiePie channel to turn out to be the most subscribed channel on the website. Since then YouTube platform has turned its lens 360- degree video, live streaming, and virtual reality

Functions of YouTube In Marketing in General

YouTube has been a source of entertaining content. However, it is also venturing into a very vital tool for all marketers. Virtually half of all the marketers that account for about 48% plan to include YouTube as their marketing strategy for the next year (Collins, n.d). Its extensive nature of being accessed in 76 different languages, which accounts for 95% world's population makes it the best marketing tool. YouTube helps a business to launch its products, specific brand's personality, provide customer service, monitor feedback, and help customers to spread the word about the business.

Solving Customer's Problems

Some businesses make use of YouTube to give solutions to their customers. The companies or personal brands post videos showing how to, for example, install their install and use their products. YouTube helps businesses to demonstrate how to use their products to avoid negative reviews about the complexity of the product. Additionally, it offers solutions to people posting questions on how to solve specific problems, like how do I make a DIY decor using a bottle? Therefore, if one's product solves such a problem, then posting a video indicating how to do it then is a significant way to bring the product or service to the consideration of people who need it.

Social Integration

YouTube has unique features that give businesses the chance to integrate their social media marketing. Many companies use more than one social media to market, while many users have different social media accounts. It has a feature that enables users to share the video with other social media accounts such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. By dispensing the business YouTube video on other popular social media platforms, business exposure increases exponentially. It is worth noting that social video generates at least 1200% more shares compared to text and image combined (Previte, 2018). Therefore, a business focusing on gaining popularity utilizes YouTube by using social integration such that the more the demand it advances, the higher it will rank increasing chances of clicks hence growing the company's brand online presence.

Google searches are integrated with YouTube such that the user can access a video on YouTube through google. Businesses with websites write high-quality articles on their sites and create complementary videos on YouTube. It builds backlinks the company's location such that they are more often found on google after search. At least 60% of searchers click on the first 3 results on google while over 90% of all Google searches click on the first ten organic results.

Demonstrating Products

YouTube allows businesses either small or large, to showcase their products in action. Companies that have limited physical distribution channels and internet-based companies use YouTube to get their existing and potential clients to see their products before they buy. They also upload videos on how to operate these products, which gives clients the confidence to ahead and purchase these products. Therefore, this is a significant function that YouTube performs to other businesses and not only in the music industry.

Demonstrating Expertise

YouTube is used by professionals to showcase their expertise in their field of profession. It helps these companies and personal brands to build a reputation as experts in that field. Professionals such as IT experts could use YouTube to upload tutorials on how to use excel, improve computer virtualization, and also to solve many problems related to IT. Chefs could also post tutorials on how to cook certain foods and bake. It will make people click on their YouTube links every time they need expert help in that respective field.

Customer Communication

YouTube offers an array of channels for businesses to communicate with their existing and prospective customers through videos. The firm also interacts with its customers through the use of YouTube Comment functionality. Customers leave remarks and questions and complain after watching the video. The company can reply to their comments. It allows the business to provide highly visible customer services and also creates a personal touch with the customers and cultivates customer trust with the company.

YouTube Advertisements

Apart from having YouTube channels to create and upload videos for viewing, companies use YouTube to run ads about their products and services. Companies either use in-stream video ads, in-slate video ads, in-search video ads, and in-display video ads to market their company and the products (Kim, 20200. Pop up advertisements that sometimes can be incredibly annoying to the viewer are very useful since the viewer has to wait for a few seconds before skipping the ad. The viewer is obliged to sit through 5 compulsory seconds of the ad before they decide to skip and continue watching the ad. If the company has done some excellent targeting, the viewer is likely to continue watching the ad to the end (Kim, 2020). It creates awareness about the company's product or even the company itself. By doing this, the client when they need a relating service go back and search for the company to transact. It has proved to be very essential, especially for companies that are not dominant in the market because many viewers come to know of their existence.

The combination of YouTube and music

There is no doubt YouTube is currently the destination for music. Except for China, YouTube is the leading global market sums to more music streams than all other streaming platforms put together. In such a fast-paced world, YouTube is both a destination for music and a social network where the next generation is congregating. YouTube launch has worked towards integrating its operations with music by launching a YouTube music service, which will involve charts grounded on famous artists, songs, and videos (Perez, 2019). In this case, the trending chart will highlight top songs and top artists while it will be updated many times a day. The trending channel will prioritize recently uploaded music to avoid the old music from bubbling up older tracks. This strategy is essential and a great combination of YouTube and music. Artists, especially if they are new in the market, highly benefit through YouTube since its more comfortable to build the audience and fan base especially. Justine Bieber was first noticed on YouTube, and since then, his music path lit to date. His continuous use of YouTube to promote his music has seen his popularity evidenced by mass YouTube viewership worldwide.

YouTube is set to launch three new personalized playlists that will enhance the promotion of music while meeting the user tastes and preferences. According to the google-owned platform, Chief executive officer Neal Mohan discovers mix had already been spotted while the new release mix and your mix had not been launched yet (Perez, 2019). Discover mix is set to focus on helping the users discover new artists and also the music they might like. It includes lesser-known tracks from artists the user already loves and artists one has never listened to before. Operations of discover mix are achieved by taking advantage of your listening data history on YouTube music and YouTube as well (Perez, 2019). Secondly, the new release mix is youtube music's kind of Spotify's Release Radar, which features the most recent release from your favorite music artists (Perez, 2019). It is a fantastic product that will see the music industry a notch higher. Users will struggle less to realize or know about their favorite artists' release. It will promote the music while making it easy for the user. Thirdly, your mix playlist combines the music the user loves, and the music they have not heard will perhaps like, based on their listening habits history. These mixes are updated weekly to be found by all worldwide users on the 'mixed for you' shelf (Perez, 2019).

According to YouTube chief executive officer Cohen, YouTube is set to combine google play music and YouTube red to enhance proper and efficient music delivery to users while promoting the music artists. Lyor Cohen recently appointed as the global head of music at YouTube that a shift in the corporate strategy is desirable to deliver the best products for YouTube users, music artists, and music partners such as combining google play music and YouTube red (Diaconescu, 2017). By doing this, the company will improve brand recognition and reduce confusion by outdoing the likes of apple music and Spotify. The new music streaming ought to have a subscription streaming service where it will have a c...