Social media and streaming platforms are constantly introducing new features but there are still a few I’d love to see that haven’t been implemented yet.

This newsletter covers:

• 5 features I’d love to see on social media and streaming platforms

Let’s dive in ⬇️ 

1. More audience cross-promotion on YouTube

YouTube has long been one of the most important platforms for artists (it’s the home of the music video) but only within the last few years has it started introducing features that encourage audience engagement or cross-promotion.

Functionality like commenting, tagging other channels in the title, and the Community tab are a step in that direction but it’d be amazing to integrate more ways for artists to reach new fans besides just the algorithm.

For example, when an artist has a music video featuring another artist, it would be cool to offer a feature similar to Instagram collab posting - a way to directly hit the audience and subscribers of the featured artist. Community posting is great but doesn’t hit the entire audience / isn’t super visible.

Understandably this type of feature is harder on YouTube - however, one idea could be for the main artist channel (the one uploading the video) to send a request to the featured artist channel where if accepted, that video would then notify the subscribers of the featured artist channel without actually being uploaded there.

2. Instagram & YouTube view integration

The ability to natively post a YouTube video (either long form or Short) to Instagram stories and have the story views count as views on the actual YouTube video itself.

Every view counts for emerging artists and being able to watch something natively within Instagram stories and have it count could be hugely beneficial for driving views.

3. Instagram post external linking

I know, I know…Instagram wants to keep people on its platform instead of driving them to external sources but the ability to embed a clickable link on a post itself would be massive.

Instead of artists having to always say “link in bio” or “click the link in my stories”, being able to click a link directly on a post itself can be massive for presaves, streaming consumption, selling tickets, and more. Almost in the same way IG shopping works where you can tag products, but this time being able to tag hyperlinks that bring you off platform.

Twitter does this with the ability to hyperlink external sites on video uploads.

4. Deeper understanding of fan data

It’s a shame that most streaming platforms (not all, but most) don’t show you who your super fans are. Being able to see that data across the major streaming platforms would be huge for artists and their teams in providing value and giving back to their biggest fans.

The same applies to social - it’d be cool, for example, if on Instagram or TikTok you could see the specific accounts or profiles that engage with your content the most.

5. More built-in ways to engage fans & super fans

For example, what if Spotify for Artists / Apple for Artists / (insert platform name for artists) had built in tools on the backend to help reward your super fans. Some platforms do this (like Soundcloud + Audiomack) but most don’t.

What if Spotify for Artists allowed you to mass message your top listeners and share files with them (ie unreleased music, music video snippets, discount codes, etc)

If the music industry is moving toward the super fan, some of its most impactful platforms need to make some changes to help us get there.

Thanks for reading, until next time.

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