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Making Money as a Musician on Youtube

bitimi said:
As someone who primarily composes music for my YouTube channel – yep. It's a long road and monetization is a hard thing to grow with music content (especially if your goal is to have a livable salary from it). But not impossible – there are plenty of channels out there that do it.
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From everything I’ve read and watched, YouTube money per stream is incredibly modest. As a result, pretty much like on the other streaming platforms, a living income would seem to have a 0.01% type of chance.

So I’m surprised, that you’re saying “plenty of channels” can make a living via publishing music content.
 
mobiuscog said:
I think that as long as you have a modular setup in the background and a lot of other gear - most all sent/requested for 'long term review' and lots of pretty lights, that's enough these days. Just release videos on each 'new' thing that's around, and job done.
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You could even use a fake background with that gear and pretty lights!
 
Nico5 said:
From everything I’ve read and watched, YouTube money per stream is incredibly modest. As a result, pretty much like on the other streaming platforms, a living income would seem to have a 0.01% type of chance.

So I’m surprised, that you’re saying “plenty of channels” can make a living via publishing music content.
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By "plenty of channels" I mean that there's enough social proof out there that it's possible, achievable, and something that could be pursued by people, knowing it will take years to get there.

In my experience, people are more likely to quit before they see any sort of success, as opposed to those who will put in the effort and time that it requires. Unless you get lucky and go viral from the get-go, it's a long-game type of thing, not a short-game.

That being said, making other types of content (educational, reactions, reviews, etc.) definitely has more of a chance of success in this regard! 😂
 
bitimi said:
By "plenty of channels" I mean that there's enough social proof out there that it's possible, achievable, and something that could be pursued by people, knowing it will take years to get there.

In my experience, people are more likely to quit before they see any sort of success, as opposed to those who will put in the effort and time that it requires. Unless you get lucky and go viral from the get-go, it's a long-game type of thing, not a short-game.

That being said, making other types of content (educational, reactions, reviews, etc.) definitely has more of a chance of success in this regard! 😂
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Right. Most people quit YouTube when they don’t get 1 million subscribers after the first month. It takes years to get good, so start now and keep working at it. There is real money being made out there. And also free gear and software to be acquired.
 
I've never had any hope of making a penny from YouTube. I doubt I ever will, although my channel was "monetized" a year and a half ago. And I've spent thousands of hours and dollars. So it's all a major loss, particularly if you think about the money I could have made with my real profession.

I've made the videos just because I wanted to. When somebody likes them it makes me happy.

And a lot more people have heard my music than ever before. I used to write something and my wife and I would be the only people who heard it. Now it's hundreds, or even thousands.

What I have found is that if I make a video that has something useful in it, I can stash my own music in it. I did a video on Band-in-a-Box that has over 30,000 views--and it never stops. Every poor soul who watches that video has my song inflicted on them! And many like it! A lot of my most popular videos include music by me.

YouTube is a search engine. If people want to learn about BIAB they find my video and see how popular it is. They hear my song.

But if I put that same song up, then very few would ever hear it.
 
There's only a single youtuber I watch (or I feel is worth my time). That's "BadHairDectective". That guy is amazing and constantly highlights all the music youtube shills and "influencers" and pokes holes into everything they say showing how most of the time they're outright lying. And his videos are creative as hell, also.
 
bitimi said:
In my experience, people are more likely to quit before they see any sort of success, as opposed to those who will put in the effort and time that it requires.
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I have to admit, that in my way of perceiving the world, there’s a very big difference between playing a lottery and a business model.

Specifically, around the chances of succeeding a meaningful way related to the effort being put in.

A simplified way to express it could be: expected revenue divided by hours of work multiplied by the chance of getting there.

So if there’s a 1% chance to get to $5000 per month for an average work effort of 50 hours per month, that would make the average expected revenue per hour about $1 per hour of work. That’s generally not enough to live on in the G20 countries.

The evil genius of YouTube (and other crowdsourced platforms) is that the platform always wins, while the creators may or may not get very much for their investment. The very small percentage of winners gets widely advertised, formally or by word of mouth and the rest keep at it in the hope, that their day will come.

Pretty much like any lottery.
 
Nico5 said:
I have to admit, that in my way of perceiving the world, there’s a very big difference between playing a lottery and a business model.

Specifically, around the chances of succeeding a meaningful way related to the effort being put in.

A simplified way to express it could be: expected revenue divided by hours of work multiplied by the chance of getting there.

So if there’s a 1% chance to get to $5000 per month for an average work effort of 50 hours per month, that would make the average expected revenue per hour about $1 per hour of work. That’s generally not enough to live on in the G20 countries.

The evil genius of YouTube (and other crowdsourced platforms) is that the platform always wins, while the creators may or may not get very much for their investment. The very small percentage of winners gets widely advertised, formally or by word of mouth and the rest keep at it in the hope, that their day will come.

Pretty much like any lottery.
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I agree, there's a big difference between the lottery and a business model. Anyone looking to do YouTube full time should treat their channel like a business. The good news is that YouTube isn't the lottery; it's not a matter of "let me post 1,000 videos and hope for success." A lot more depth and effort goes into it than that.
 
Nico5 said:
The evil genius of YouTube (and other crowdsourced platforms) is that the platform always wins, while the creators may or may not get very much for their investment. The very small percentage of winners gets widely advertised, formally or by word of mouth and the rest keep at it in the hope, that their day will come.

Pretty much like any lottery.
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Well I've been doing YouTube over 10 years as my primary source of income and it's not exactly like playing the lottery. There is an element of chance though in that you are a victim to the algorithms and the tweaks they do to them. We've had our YT income be at $7000/mo, then drop down to $2000 within 3 months. Hmmm, sounds a lot like doing production and sync music?!?
 
vibrationisreality said:
... and it's not exactly like playing the lottery.
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Agreed, since you have to put in very hard work, just to even have a ticket. And congratulations of being among the low percentage of YT creators who's made long term meaningful income doing so.


Just curious: Since the overall context of this thread (and my posts) was more about making a living by publishing music on YT and that having an incredibly low (lottery type) chance of success:

Is this primary source of income from publishing your original music on YT, or from other content?

The video of the original post shared the experience that publishing music on YT was negligible income. The much more meaningful money came from making videos about the process and gear etc. -- and I posted earlier that it was a little like selling jeans, shovels and picks being generally more lucrative than digging for gold.
 
What she shows makes sense. my guess is that The average person goes to YouTube for certain things. A lot of it is to see product reviews. Since it's tied to a product then there is bigger chance of getting more money out of it.
Then theres entertainment. And for that theres a lot of competition against music. Why see a random woman play a random song on guitar that sounds ok when theres 20 videos that are amazingly produce that have all sorts of entertainment value, including music. Or why see a YouTuber when you can see parts of tv shows or movies and of course see Netflix and so on.
And I want to listen to music then I can go and search for my favorite artist thats probably signed to a labeled, many others know the artists and theres probably tons of gossip and other stuff not related to music. In short, YouTube as a music platform doesn't seem its that good imo but still useful.

Maybe some people will pivot while others dont know how. For example, in that OP video I could totally see her making very good documentaries. Her voice and persona explained and showed very clear info about something and it was interesting. Some folks just have that knack to it but get cornered into doing music due to being so emotionally invested but I bet once you do creative things outside of music its not so bad.
 
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BassmanDave said:
There's only a single youtuber I watch (or I feel is worth my time). That's "BadHairDectective". That guy is amazing and constantly highlights all the music youtube shills and "influencers" and pokes holes into everything they say showing how most of the time they're outright lying. And his videos are creative as hell, also.
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That channel sucks IMO, but to each his or her own.
 
bitimi said:
I agree, there's a big difference between the lottery and a business model. Anyone looking to do YouTube full time should treat their channel like a business. The good news is that YouTube isn't the lottery; it's not a matter of "let me post 1,000 videos and hope for success." A lot more depth and effort goes into it than that.
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And cringe shocked faces.
 
Not sure if anybody else uses EdX, but...there's a terrific course there, with free and paid versions, that discusses Hollywood in terms of its revenue creation through many cycles of technical innovation.



The course includes one-on-one interviews with many folks who've met financial success in different sectors of 'Hollywood,' including today's YouTube. One of the visionaries who helped transform YouTube into whatever the hell it has become, recounts many triumphs, using words like 'boobs' and 'thumbnails' with a gleeful, transparent adjacency that raises my hair. I'm glad there's no evil in the world, thank goodness!

Mary Spender made a wonderful cover of "Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)" on her channel. As far as I am concerned, that one cover was enough for ever. I think the social media posting cycle has compulsion/addiction baked right into it, so people can do amazing things like that and still feel stuck. So interesting!
 
Greeno said:
"I've been making 10 k per month on Amazon selling ebooks, sign up to my workshop and watch a video where at the end I ask you to buy my product that does this for you, its not that I'm actually making money from selling books its that I make it the money selling a bit of software which 'could ' help you do that, that's how I make 10k a month"
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Yeah these are always suspect aren't they?

Like, if you are making soooo much money selling books, why tf are you selling a course now? Get back to writing you goof!
 
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