Episode Transcript
[00:00:32] Speaker A: Hey guys, it's Tariqa and we're back with the music Industry 360 podcast in part two of let's talk video distribution. We'll be talking about video monetization and YouTube optimization. Let's get into it.
How does video monetization work?
[00:00:48] Speaker B: By default, with the agreement that we have with our partners that with Vivo ad monetization is automatic turned on. That's part of the deal with Vivo and YouTube. So it's automatically using the YouTube ad monetization. So you'll have ads played before the video that you can skip later. And based on that, that will also help determine with the views of your videos what the rate of your payout is when you get thousand views, 100 million views on a video?
[00:01:22] Speaker C: No, we wish.
[00:01:24] Speaker B: There's a few of them that might get that.
And then with itunes, itunes monetization is more they have streaming monetization for the Apple Music and itunes is the only one that actually still sells the music video that you can download even though that's on the decline the past couple of years. But they use the same system when we send it to them. So when we send it to itunes it will go both on the streaming and the store platform.
[00:01:51] Speaker C: Yeah, but the main revenue earner, I would say, is Vivo.
[00:01:56] Speaker B: It's a vivo.
[00:01:57] Speaker C: YouTube partnership.
[00:01:58] Speaker B: Yeah, it's mostly Vivo because Vivo had a partnership with YouTube, which is already huge and they have monetization, but they also have monetization on their website, their mobile platform as well. So you're getting a widespread of exposure with Vivo not just on YouTube, but Vivo has partnership with news sites and other websites using their mobile player and their playlist and also feeding videos to their TV app and the mobile app. So you're always getting more views, just more spread out, not just on the YouTube platform.
[00:02:35] Speaker C: And the main question I get a lot is is content ID. Like YouTube content ID. Is that the same thing as video monetization?
[00:02:42] Speaker B: It's not, even though it's very similar name and a lot of people get confused. But with the YouTube Content ID, basically we use it on the music side. But it can also be used for the music video side because audio and video go hand in hand. But the Content ID mostly you have to register your music with the YouTube Content ID service and that will be kind of like the checkbook.
[00:03:10] Speaker C: You do that through your distributor.
[00:03:11] Speaker B: Yeah, you have to kind of opt in to your distributors because you have to first and foremost upload and submit your music. So since your distributor has your music they can already provide YouTube Content ID your tracks, so they have it in their arsenal. So when they scan throughout the world of YouTube, if your song is being used in a video that they can flag it with a copyright claim and you can collect the money on that video because they're using your music on that video.
[00:03:42] Speaker C: Yeah, your track is like they call it, it's a digital fingerprint, basically, that they look for that and it's individual and they just look for that on YouTube and if they find it and then I'm going with what we do, but if it's flagged as ours as a copyright, then we automatically just monetize it.
[00:03:59] Speaker B: Yeah, with Content ID, once you get the music not, we can also submit the music video. So if somebody's using footage from your music video or like a crowd shot from your video or some snippet of your music video, the Content ID can also catch it too, even if it's a little distorted and such. The system been upgraded to be able to detect even when videos are only on screen for a little bit, they were able to detect that that's not their footage.
[00:04:29] Speaker C: So ideally, you should be with a distributor that does both. Because even though we offer video distribution as a separate service, it would benefit you as an artist to be with us as a digital distribution client and also video distribution client, because you can automatically opt in to YouTube Content ID as a digital distribution client, whereas it's not included with video distribution, like I've mentioned.
[00:04:50] Speaker A: Can you make a lot of money.
[00:04:51] Speaker B: With video distribution if it goes viral?
If it goes viral and you market it enough to actually get the views really above 100,000, then yeah, you can make some money on it.
[00:05:04] Speaker A: Have you guys seen any videos go viral?
[00:05:07] Speaker C: I mean, we have some clients that are over a million views that we've distributed, so they're making a lot of revenue there and they've done their work in terms of marketing the video release and stuff. But the main thing to keep in mind is, like I said earlier, the video is meant to promote your music. So if you time it right and do release at the same time as your track, you may end up making more money by streaming your track. Not so much the music video.
[00:05:31] Speaker D: Yeah, and I mean, at the end of the day, a lot of artists are most unhappy with how YouTube pays because they tend to pay the least amount per view as opposed to Spotify with how much they pay artists per play. So like Vanessa said, it does work as a great promotional tool for the actual track.
[00:05:53] Speaker B: Yeah. One thing we need to kind of get across and clear that there is no magic number of view equals payout. Both Spotify, YouTube, any of these streaming platforms, they have their own particular algorithm ratio of how they calculate what pays out and then also in terms of the advertisers that are giving money to the platforms to pay the artists for advertising over or before the video.
So it's not going to be like every one view or every thousand views is $5, $10,000 or so. There's a lot of variables per platform.
Sometimes it depends on market share sometimes it depends on how long you've been on YouTube with the amount of content you have on. If you're a brand new artist, putting your first video and let's say it makes it 1 million views, but then beyonce puts out a video and it gets 2 million views, the payout will be drastically different. Because a new artist versus an artist that's already on the platform with content, and then it also applies when it comes to features. If you have a big following that will show the platform that, hey, they're going to get a lot of views because they have this many views on the previous video. So that will also add more money for you to put out more content.
[00:07:19] Speaker C: So if they have a good marketing campaign, basically, yeah.
[00:07:22] Speaker D: Can I just add also you can't expect every view to equate to money because not every viewer is shown ads per view.
There's only a percentage of your total views that you're actually making money off of because only that certain percentage are showing ads.
[00:07:47] Speaker C: And it also depends on how many people actually click the ads and then how many people watch the video all the way know. Because that's the other thing is YouTube has to verify that it's a view and it's not a of you see a lot of advertisements out there where you can buy views or you can have a bot so you can boost your views and that's a big no no. And they actually will take your video down off of Vivo if they notice that. If they have proof that there's fraudulent.
[00:08:13] Speaker B: View activity and they are able to detect it. So there's no way to hide from it both on the audio or video side, if you try to boost or what they call juice your juice your music and juicy your views, the platforms are going to be able to detect it and you won't be able to get away. And then in the end, you'll probably get suspended and all your account blocked.
[00:08:40] Speaker C: Yeah. So just grow your views organically.
Do the PR, do the marketing ahead of time. Don't just push it out.
Ali, you can touch on this too and Tariqa too on the marketing side, but you see sometimes a lot of people that don't have social media profiles at all, that just how are you going to reach your fans. But if they do have the profiles, they sometimes will just share the video over and over again. No, you need to do more interaction to help grow your fan base and therefore grow your streams and your exposure.
[00:09:12] Speaker A: Yeah, I definitely agree.
[00:09:13] Speaker D: Yeah, you definitely want to use other ways of promotion besides just clicking the share button at the bottom of your like from posting in Facebook groups to Reddit groups, to creating fan contests through a place like Hive, a website like Hive that really pushes your fans to promote your latest music video.
[00:09:41] Speaker A: What kind of features can symbonic secure for their clients.
[00:09:45] Speaker D: When it comes to music video features, I'm actually the person that pitches on a weekly basis to Vivo. And there's a pretty long list of features that you can secure being from the Discover Playlist on Vivo to Genre Playlists to the YouTube channel cards. If you're familiar with those, the little I icon at the top right hand corner of a video, that's a channel card. And you can also even get featured from time to time on their Instagram on YouTube annotations.
But what we tend to see the most when it comes to Vivo features is in their discover and genre playlists. And so when I pitch to Vivo, what really helps out with a lot of these pitches in general is to include your marketing drivers and to include your social media following and any additional information that's going to help your music video release.
[00:10:53] Speaker C: If you've been featured on any other.
[00:10:55] Speaker D: Blog or website, any press links greatly helps. So those playlists are definitely going to be the best spot to get a feature know. And that's how it know with music streaming too. Like on Spotify you want to get on those big spotify playlists. That's same thing with music videos on Vivo and also Title is similar. Title also has those Title rising playlists staff picks, playlists and exclusives also the genre playlists as well.
[00:11:30] Speaker C: Yeah with the Vivo ones that's solely on the Vivo.com platform and the Vivo mobile platform.
And then you were saying the YouTube annotations that's on the Vivo YouTube side because I don't think we touched on this. But with Vivo distribution it's three in one. Basically your video is going to be on a Vivo branded YouTube channel but also we would create an artist profile on Vivo.com where your video would also be know, getting views and then also on the Vivo mobile app so it gets monetized in three different places basically.
[00:12:04] Speaker D: Yeah so that's know three times the amount of exposure, which is super.
[00:12:09] Speaker B: And when we, when we say the mobile app, it's mostly the Vivo application because they have multiple so like they have the Vivo Apple TV app and Roku app that you can watch music videos off your. So that's, that's kind of what I use at home whenever I want to watch music videos and not get lost in the YouTube rabbit hole. Other videos that are not music videos but also they do have the mobile app that you can watch music videos on both Apple and Android. So the.com feeds more broader platforms out there.
[00:12:46] Speaker C: Oh and back to Ali mentioned Instagram, we actually had one of our video distribution clients, Kalma Carmona. Well actually she's a digital distribution client as well. But Kalma Carmona got a feature on.
[00:12:59] Speaker D: She actually she was able to do an Instagram takeover on Vivo. If you're not familiar with Vivo, that's basically the Latino version of Vivo.
[00:13:10] Speaker A: So Ali earlier you mentioned YouTube optimization. What exactly is that?
[00:13:14] Speaker D: So I like to explain YouTube optimization as almost like a makeover from the outside in of your YouTube channel. So with that, optimization can range from the overall branding of your channel so what viewers see on the outside.
But to dig deeper. Optimizing your channel is really going through each individual video and making sure that it's tagged correctly, that it's titled, and that there's a description that coincides with the title that you have there just so that YouTube's algorithms can really pick up on your content and place it in the search engine quicker and more efficiently. And that also helps with the recommended videos. When someone is watching a video that's not even your video, having your videos optimized correctly will help place that on the recommended videos on the side.
[00:14:14] Speaker C: There one thing I noticed that looks nice too is when they do have, like we were saying about having a Vivo channel and a personal channel when they have the same images on both because then they look more cohesive and same thing with social media, you can change it and have be different on each one. But me personally, I think if you have the same wallpaper or banner on Facebook that you do on YouTube, then okay, yeah, this is the official page. Oh, and also the main thing to remember too, is that we do offer this YouTube optimization service through Symphonic, but it's not for Vivo channels. It's meant to help you boost your own personal YouTube channel to help get more exposure and to know like, you know, to get your content to show up more often in searches.
[00:14:58] Speaker B: Yeah, especially, also when your personal channel will most likely probably be under a label. Because one thing with Vivo that they don't accept labels to have a Vivo channel created. So could we come across label managers wanting to create a channel for the label to have three of the artists'music videos on? But Viva doesn't want to play that.
Viva don't play that because if an artist leaves a label, that video should stay live under the artist's name. So no matter if he jumps a label or gets dropped from a label, his video is still out there and he can still collect on the video.
[00:15:40] Speaker C: And not lose the views too.
[00:15:41] Speaker B: Yeah, not lose the views. So that's why Vivo strongly suggests that labels should not have a Vivo channel because those kind of issues of artists coming and going and then you have to spend more time updating this channel of an artist so they really prefer artists.
[00:15:59] Speaker D: Only the best option in that scenario would be to have, if you're a label have your artists, you can still have the Vivo channel for your individual artists, but then on your personal channel on YouTube, create playlists and add your artist videos from Vivo into those playlists. So then you're promoting it in two.
[00:16:19] Speaker C: Places and also, you're not losing any views, because that's the other thing too is a lot of people ask, can I have my video up on my personal page and on Vivo? And say, well, you won't be able to monetize it on your personal page, so you're losing your views there. So that's why I say, if you plan on releasing it, do the like what we said. Link the playlist to your Vivo video. So you're not losing any views and.
[00:16:43] Speaker D: Any monetization there, because some artists do also. They release it both places, like you just said. But maybe a fan is going to see the video in one place where it has less views than the other place. So it's like some viewers are going to see the amount of views on one of the videos, and it's going to be way less than possibly the other video. So from a branding standpoint, that doesn't always look as good.
[00:17:08] Speaker B: Yeah. So if you plan early enough to release your video on your Vivo channel before you put on your personal channel and you direct your fan base, hey, my video is coming out on Vivo. If you are able to funnel your fans to follow your music that way, then you get the best possible outcome in terms of making money from that video.
[00:17:32] Speaker A: Okay, so how do I get more views on my video? You guys mentioned earlier that some people buy views. Is that the right way?
[00:17:39] Speaker D: Yeah. Definitely not.
[00:17:41] Speaker B: That would do the opposite. It might even just suspend your channel, like we mentioned.
[00:17:47] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:17:51] Speaker D: With a personal channel, like I mentioned, optimization, that's a key factor in gaining more views. And also it helps in gaining views that are going to give you a better audience retention rate. And what that basically means is the longer someone watches your video, the higher the audience retention is in the YouTube analytics and YouTube's algorithms actually rely more heavily on the audience retention rates over the views, over the view count, essentially. So a lot of people think that views are all that matters, but in reality, it's the audience retention that matters the most. Because that means people, they liked your video enough to watch it all the way through or watch the most of the video.
[00:18:40] Speaker C: So that's why you recommend, too, when you upload the video to your channel to actually watch it yourself on your channel, let it play all the way through, because that'll boost that score.
[00:18:49] Speaker D: Yeah, even giving your own video a like is going to help too. So there's a bunch of little aspects of optimization that add up. But definitely keeping in mind that views aren't everything is important.
[00:19:05] Speaker C: We mentioned earlier, too, about giving yourself enough time to tease your video's release and also time it with your track release. But there's a lot of things you could do to tease your video release. You could actually do like an Instagram teaser video and just show, like a small snippet, like a 15 2nd snippet of the videos. And let's say, like, releasing soon.
You could do that. You could also do a countdown, like ten days to my video release and then be sharing that and stuff. I see a lot of artists do that.
[00:19:35] Speaker D: Yeah. And also, I mean, if someone sees your teaser video leading up to the release, or even once it's come out and they click the link, there's a much higher chance that the audience retention is going to be great because they know what they're clicking before they actually get to your video. So if they liked that teaser, they're probably going to watch it all the way through.
[00:19:55] Speaker C: Fan interaction is definitely really important.
[00:19:57] Speaker D: Yeah, for sure. And that's why I mentioned earlier, too, with the difference between a personal channel and Vivo. The nice thing about a personal is you can interact with your fans when you know, because they want to feel like they're involved in the process.
[00:20:15] Speaker B: Yeah. We do get a couple requests from clients to disable the comment on the Vivo channel just because they are not able to respond to positive or negative reviews.
[00:20:29] Speaker C: Well, if you have a personal channel, you could log in under that account and then check the comments on your Vivo video and just you can respond as your personal channel.
[00:20:38] Speaker B: Yeah, on your personal channel. But the Vivo channel itself, you can't.
[00:20:40] Speaker C: Right.
[00:20:41] Speaker B: Because that's one of the limiting aspects of having a Vivo channel. Because when we send it to Vivo, you don't get a login. It's all on the distributor side, so you don't have as much control, like your personal YouTube with Login and all the other access, we just upload the video for you guys.
But in terms of managing it, it's all per Vivo.
[00:21:07] Speaker D: Yeah. I mean, at the end of the day, there's really pros and cons to both sides. So it's just weighing those out and deciding what's best for your situation.
[00:21:15] Speaker C: I am curious because Tariqa asked me earlier what my favorite music video is, and now I want to know what everyone else's favorite music video is. So who wants to go first?
[00:21:27] Speaker D: I'm honestly going to say one that's been my favorite since I was a little kid. Oops, I Did It Again by Britney Spears.
It's like going into the space.
Yeah. So I just think that's such a classic music video always be one of my faves.
[00:21:49] Speaker B: I feel like I'm going to date myself a little bit here.
This is kind of like a twofold, but this music video is kind of what made me get into video a little bit, just because I wanted to figure out how they did it, even though nowadays it's pretty simple.
[00:22:05] Speaker C: Simple for you, maybe.
[00:22:06] Speaker B: Well, no, just in terms of technology. Because when I was little, I saw this music video on MTV and it was a catchy song. But also I wanted to figure out how did they do some of the special effects? What is it? It was a groove in the heart by delight.
[00:22:25] Speaker D: I don't know that one.
[00:22:28] Speaker B: If you heard it, you know what it is.
[00:22:29] Speaker C: Maybe, yeah, you and I, I was going to say you and I are roughly around the same age, so I'm sure I've heard it.
[00:22:34] Speaker B: Yeah, because it was mostly on green screen. But that was before I knew what green screen was.
[00:22:40] Speaker C: The magic of green screen.
[00:22:42] Speaker B: And then there were a couple of war buffets. So it's kind of like stuff like that that kind of got me into figure out video. Later on, I was trying to go into movies, trying to figure out how the movies are done. But that music video has kind of got me on the path of video. So that's kind of where it went. In terms of my favorite music video lately is that Bruno Mars 24 karat.
Just because of the different cinematography and low angles and just overall editing of that down kind of is currently my favorite video just in terms of how 24 Kilo it is.
[00:23:22] Speaker D: Nice.
[00:23:24] Speaker C: What Kanye video? Are you going to tell us?
[00:23:27] Speaker A: It actually is a Kanye video.
[00:23:29] Speaker C: I knew it.
[00:23:30] Speaker A: It's Wolves by Kanye.
[00:23:33] Speaker B: Speaking of Mike?
[00:23:35] Speaker A: No.
[00:23:37] Speaker B: What?
[00:23:37] Speaker A: It's Wolves by Kanye. It's kind of like a dark, twisted fashion show. Kim Kardashian's in it. A lot of top models are in it.
If you guys are familiar with the Lime Ball Mon, they use it as their campaign video for the season that had came out around that time.
[00:23:57] Speaker B: It's not the one that's laying in the bed based on a painting.
[00:24:00] Speaker A: No, not that one. This one's badass.
So what's everyone listening to right now? I know we just talked about favorite videos, but what are you listening to?
[00:24:13] Speaker B: I'm lost after doing that Spotify wound up scene. So I don't know what I haven't been listening to based on those numbers.
[00:24:21] Speaker A: Oh, the 2017 Rap wrap up or whatever.
[00:24:24] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm lost after seeing those numbers. I don't know what I'm listening to anymore.
[00:24:27] Speaker A: I love how they put together a playlist with the songs that you skipped and it's just like I skipped these for a reason.
[00:24:34] Speaker D: Yeah, I don't like this.
[00:24:37] Speaker B: I don't know why. Mine says, like, I only explored one genre.
[00:24:40] Speaker A: Mine too, actually.
[00:24:42] Speaker D: Really?
[00:24:43] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:24:43] Speaker D: There's something up with that. Then.
[00:24:45] Speaker A: There's no way that mine said pop. And I was like, this is wrong.
[00:24:49] Speaker C: Mine said, I think bro. Step. I was like, what's?
[00:24:52] Speaker D: Out of all people that I saw Bro step?
[00:24:55] Speaker C: I mean, I don't listen to Spotify too often. I usually listen to music. I guess I'm old school because I still buy music on itunes and I have it on my phone and I listen to my phone, like in the car and stuff. Like through really? Because at work, when I'm working on videos and stuff for video distribution, I can't be listening to music. I have to listen to the video to make sure everything meets everything. But mine actually had my list was mostly Muse, as everyone knows. I love Muse.
[00:25:24] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:25:25] Speaker C: But to get back to what I'm I guess we'll go to me, what I'm listening to as guilty. I'm always late, too on stuff, but I recently fallen in love with Perfect by Ed Sheeran, and they just came out with a duet version of him and Beyonce that did a version of that.
[00:25:41] Speaker A: Yeah, they came out today, I think.
[00:25:42] Speaker C: Or maybe no, I listened to it a couple of days ago, but I think it premiered on Title because I actually have the title. So every now and then I'll be, you know, and I saw it. I think I saw it advertised on Facebook. I was like, what?
[00:25:52] Speaker A: Yeah, I saw it on Instagram today.
[00:25:54] Speaker C: And I was like, oh, but I loved it so much. Like, I actually asked my fiance if we could change our first dance song to it, and he said, no, we're going with a Muse song. And we originally picked I'm like, all right, fine. But yeah, it's a very romantic song.
[00:26:07] Speaker D: I like it. Nice.
I've been listening to Cascade Christmas, and I don't know if you guys are familiar with Cascade. He's a producer, puts a nice electronic spin on Christmas music, just pretty different. You don't see that every day.
[00:26:25] Speaker B: Well, I'm currently stuck just because I'm trying to figure out what's going on with the Christmas album. Oh, yeah, there's a couple of songs in there. I'm trying to understand why the lyrics, the way they are, they're catchy, but the one music video one that she came out was speaking of music videos, it has a lot of celebrity guest characters in there, but that's like an extra word in there. But now I got to look it up.
[00:27:00] Speaker C: Tariq, what are you listening to?
[00:27:03] Speaker A: Paramore, actually, I saw them on Sunday and I'm still listening to them.
[00:27:08] Speaker D: It's always the best when you see a concert in person and then you just listen to them the whole week after.
[00:27:14] Speaker C: And on the way there, turn the.
[00:27:17] Speaker D: Car in the drive there.
[00:27:21] Speaker B: Of course, this first thing pops up on my spotify when I log in is your to see your Christmas album?
I don't know. A lot of times get kind of bored with traditional Christmas music, and so I'm always looking for remixes. And then when we did a volunteer thing and set SIA's Christmas album came out, I finally was able to listen to it and just let the whole album play on spotify. And there's a few songs it's like they're catchy, but I just don't know.
[00:27:56] Speaker C: That reminds me of that song that DMX came out with, the Rudolph Rendell's Reindeer. I loved that. It made me laugh.
[00:28:05] Speaker B: He did that at a radio station, I want to say, four or five years ago. And now they finally did, like, a recorded version, but it sounds almost exactly like he did at the radio station, so that's why I'm kind of perplexed by it.
[00:28:19] Speaker A: Well, that wraps up episode seven of the Music Industry 360 podcast. I'm Tariqa. I'm Vanessa.
[00:28:25] Speaker D: I'm alexandra.
[00:28:26] Speaker B: Lorenzo.
[00:28:27] Speaker A: Have a happy holiday, and we'll see you in 2018.
