In this talk Wendy Day explains why music videos and lyric videos are essential for independent artists and how to produce and promote them cost‑effectively. She advocates shooting many low‑budget videos rather than a few expensive ones to showcase an artist’s image and encourage fan sharing. YouTube is presented as the primary video platform because it drives discovery, offers playlist culture (especially in regions like South America), and provides free educational resources such as YouTube University and certification courses. Day warns against buying cheap bot views, emphasizing that real, geographically relevant viewers are needed to convert into merchandise sales and concert attendance. She outlines promotional tactics including targeted ad spend, influencer campaigns, playlist co‑sharing with similar‑genre artists, and leveraging free YouTube studio space for high‑quality production. Authentic, “down‑and‑dirty” content is encouraged over overly polished videos that may feel inauthentic. The overall goal is to turn video exposure into sustainable income, allowing artists to quit day jobs and gain leverage in the music industry.
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Hey guys, so I want to talk about music videos and lyric videos and their importance. Because we're so content-oriented in the music industry, your videos are going to get far more exposure than just the audio versions of your song, so you need to have really great videos. Um, we don't spend a lot of money on videos because we'd rather shoot a lot of videos at a lower price point than to have, um, just one or two really high— highly expensive videos. Um, this is where you get to show your image. This is where you get to really suck people in. In a perfect world, you want a video that's so well done and so interesting that your fans are sharing your videos with each other. Um, once we shoot a video and we get it out there, it depends on who your market is. Um, there are certain sites that we upload to, there's certain sites we don't upload to. Um, and again, this is all opinion, so you guys are gonna have to go and do the research. But for my clients, we upload to YouTube all the time. YouTube is the most important video site It's where a lot of people go to discover music. It's where a lot of people go once they hear your song and they want more information on who you are, so they'll go to your YouTube channel. It's also a place that has playlists where, um, especially like in South America, I noticed that they use YouTube as a streaming platform the way like we use Apple, Spotify, um, and Tidal here, or the way Deezer is used in France. Um, we make sure that we've got videos out there that communicate the song and the image really well. We put them onto YouTube and then we put a budget, an advertising budget, behind the video to drive eyeballs to it. Now, we don't drive bullshit bots. We don't just go for streams and views. So if somebody is selling you on the fact that if you pay $1,000 and you get 100,000 streams on YouTube, that could be problematic because they may not be real people streaming your video, or they might be people in Russia or Indonesia or India streaming your video. And you want people here in the US streaming your video because you want to turn these potential fans into fans. You want to get them to buy your merchandise eventually and come to your shows. And if you're just reaching a bunch of people that aren't in the area where you're based in your target market, it's just going to make it a little bit harder for you to get these people into your franchise and spending money with you. And the goal of this, remember, is to make a living. In a perfect world, you want to be able to quit your day job and have an income and feed your family with your music. That's always the goal. So there's also other sites out there and blogs where you can post music. You can do an influencer campaign and get your music featured, and there's a video on influencer campaigns, um, and get your music onto sites like Say Cheese or NextGenTV or WorldStarHipHop. You could, you could take that route, um, you could, um, get on YouTube playlists. So get your video onto YouTube playlists so that it's being shared with other artists. You can even do, um, uh, co-share arrangements where you get together with 10 other artists, you each create a playlist, you put all of your music on that playlist, and you share that playlist. So now you've got 10 different people— excuse me, it's one playlist, it's not 10 playlists. There's 10 artists that get together and put their music on that playlist and then all of you are marketing and promoting that playlist so that instead of one person doing the work, there's 10 of you doing the work and there's 10 times the budget because you're each putting in a little bit of money to market that one playlist. Just make sure that your music is all kind of similar. Don't, don't have one rock song, one rap song. It's just going to make it a little bit— even though genres are disappearing in streaming, it's going to make it a little bit more difficult to reach your target market. So there's a lot of ways to come at this. Um, the great thing about YouTube is they offer free, um, information online. There's a YouTube course that you can take, just like there's the Google Ad course that we talked about in digital marketing. You can become YouTube certified. You can take classes at, at YouTube University online for free and really maximize your opportunities and learn how to place cards and where to place ads and how, if you've got a video that lasts longer than 10 minutes— and this would be more for content than music, right? But if you've got a video that lasts longer than 10 minutes, you can place ads within your, um, video. You can, you can choose where you put them. You can put them at the 2-minute mark, the 4-minute mark, wherever. But you can put videos inside of your, um, You can put ads inside of your video, and I don't recommend you interrupt your video if you're a new artist unless you've got a whole lot of people already coming to your site and your content is pretty popular, because you could turn people away because they see a video, they might go look at something else, and you could lose them. Having said all that, if you've got a subscriber base on your YouTube channel of above 10,000, you probably already know that if you're in a city that has a YouTube studio, you can go and film, um, for free using their equipment. That's New York, LA, wherever there is a YouTube studio, um, you can set up an appointment. You have to go through a little mini course first, um, and it's not hard because I did it, and if I can do it, you can do it. Um, there's a little mini course that you take, and then you can use their studios and all of their equipment and all of their editing equipment for free. So there's really no excuse for you not to have really dynamic content. Not just dynamic content, but dynamic-looking content. It's gotta look good. I realize that you guys are watching me shoot, um, in my office with a window behind me with— I didn't even comb my hair yet today. I have no makeup on. I do change my glasses because I don't change my hairstyle, so every day I have different glasses on, but I'm just shooting this with my iPhone. And the reason I'm keeping this really down and dirty and simple is because when I have spent a lot of money to shoot really crisp how-to videos, nobody watches them. They don't look authentic and they don't look real. So I made the choice to sit either in front of my laptop or my iPhone and basically just yak at you guys to give you as much information as you could use, because getting you the information means more to me than you saying, wow, Wendy Day looks great in her videos, or Wendy Day combs 'Or Wendy Day has some really great eyeglasses.' Yes, I have some really great eyeglasses, but this isn't about that. This is about you taking the knowledge that I'm giving to you for free and applying it to your own career so that you can go and make money. Because the more independent rap artists we have out here making money, the more the music industry is going to take you guys seriously, and the more money they're going to put into you guys, and the more control and freedom and ownership you're gonna be able to have because you're gonna have leverage. This is all about leverage and making money in music. Okay guys, take care. Bye.
