YouTube Steps Up Its Artist Promotion Game

For all of YouTube's success in the cat and hamster space, the video platform is by far the largest music streaming site on the Internet, drawing viewers in with official music videos that lead to a veritable rabbit hole of covers, fan uploads, and original material from every kind of artist imaginable. The site has its own home-grown superstars, and video plays are critical to artist discovery, promotion, chart performance, and, with monetized content, additional revenue streams. YouTube announced that it is throwing more muscle behind its artist services, launching a YouTube For Artists initiative to centralize resources and analytics for musicians, labels, and other industry users.

The new site is an artist-focused version of the more generic YouTube creator hub that already exists to help users create content and build an audience. The music industry-dedicated destination "takes the wisdom of experts who've spent years learning about YouTube through analytics and how to gain exposure, and delivering it to a wider audience of artists," says Vivien Lewit, YouTube's head of artist and label relations. "We're taking all of that and aggregating it in one specific place in a digestible format. It will help people understand how to gain fans, how to monetize content, what does YouTube's algorithm reward, and what do those rewards mean in terms of where your videos will be surfaced."