Industry news & advice blog

Music producer OD Hunte shares his views on why YouTube is such an important factor in breaking an emerging band or artist, and how working to create new content can help in this process…

There’s never been more opportunity to be discovered as an independent artist than in today’s music industry and much of this opportunity is driven by YouTube as it has evolved into the #1 music search engine. 

In 2013 music fans watched a combined total of 1 billion hours of music videos and music related video. There cannot be a more compelling reason for unsigned artists to get their songs, as well as cover songs, onto YouTube to increase their chances of building their fanbase. The more quality content an artist has, the more they can engage and gain more fans. Simply put, more music and video content for fans to engage with equals more fans. 

Uploading covers onto YouTube has become a viable route to gaining fame and notoriety, and in some spectacular cases, being signed (Justin Bieber, Conor Maynard) but there are other cases. 

Cover versions can show up as related videos next to the original artist’s version and also alongside additional popular cover versions by other artists with high view counts. Due to this, some unsigned artists uploading popular covers have received millions of hits on their videos and can then direct viewers to hear their original songs, provide links to their website, and most importantly their mailing list. 

Another important fact to consider is that radio, press and live agents, plus music supervisors tend to do the same thing when checking out a new artist. They will Google an artist and look at their social media follower numbers and view counts. In a recent article in The Guardian, Radio 1 executives discussed whether to playlist a band and were quoted YouTube view counts on their music video as a reason as to support or not support the record and artist.

Having 1 or 2 tracks on their own isn't enough these days in the content-hungry social media world we live in. An unsigned artists first steps in music should be to find a good, relevant producer; one whose sound is current and who has a good history of getting independent music into TV and film internationally.

You need to work to get an EP of material together and, in addition to the EP, artists should get a collection of covers together. Initially, covers can help with discovery on YouTube and can also help to bolster the set lists for live performances too.

We can create a package over the course of 3 months of content including original tracks, original music videos, studio covers, one-take videos of covers, behind the scenes photos, professional photo shoots and branding to be used as the basis for a fan building or promotional campaign to build an artists' career and, as clients take this on a monthly retainer, we offer a lower rate for clients than on an ad-hoc basis. Tracks may be used for radio, sync opportunities, live performance, TV distribution and online distribution.

In the past year we have help unsigned and completely unknown artists gain radio play in the UK and, more specifically, one artist gained the coveted Radio 1 BBC Introducing radio playlist for a week, followed by a week-long BBC Radio 1Xtra Introducing playlist spot too.

We love helping unknown artists get to that next level of visibility and providing them with the scope to get placements onto TV, film and games. For more information on our 3 month Artist Development Programme and previous placements we’ve achieved, check out the links below. 

www.odhuntemusicandfilm.com
www.odhunte.com
www.odhuntemusicandfilm.com/previous