I’ve been thinking about YouTube a lot lately and as big as the platform is, part of me wonders if it’s still somewhat of a sleeping giant.

This newsletter highlights:

• A few thoughts on YouTube

Let’s dive in ⬇️ 

The below thoughts might feel a little scattered - they range from general best practices I see people missing to features I’d love to see. YouTube is arguably the biggest streaming platform in the world (depending on how you look at it) but in many respects, some of its utility is still in the early stages.

Best practices

One general best practice I see artists missing all the time is not uploading audio videos or visualizers to their channel in the absence of official music videos. Many artists don’t upload the song to their YouTube channel (even if it’s just audio) and as a result, miss out on opportunity for a few reasons.

1) It’s a more enjoyable user experience for your fans / subscribers to be able to listen to your new music directly on your channel (as opposed to them being on YouTube and having to go to another service to listen).

2) Uploading all of your new music can help capitalize on any SEO around that new song and increase your channel growth (because your channel shows up in search results).

3) When audio (as well as music videos) uploaded to your channel are claimed by YouTube’s Content ID, it can help increase the overall consumption of the song with those views being reported to Music Connect / Luminate.

Features I’d love to see

These are just a few I’d love to see:

1) YouTube’s version of Instagram collab posts - functionality so that when publishing a video, you can directly hit the subscribers of another channel

2) Sharing directly to IG stories - the ability to share videos from YouTube natively to Instagram stories and having those IG story views count toward the YouTube video

3) Cleaner merch integration - instead of a merch “shelf” underneath the video, having a cleaner and more visible way of displaying products

4) Embedded player in text messages - when texting a YouTube link to a friend using an iPhone or Android, having a snippet of the video embed in the text message and play

5) Publish directly from YouTube (long form) to social - the ability to select time stamps and video formatting (wide or vertical), cut snippets, and publish directly to social

6) YouTube as a workspace

YouTube as a workspace

While YouTube is about publishing videos and sort of the “end result” in the content distribution pipeline (since it’s being uploaded), what happens to all of the work beforehand?

I could see YouTube buying a company like frame.io and integrating a video editing workspace into its platform - what if you could edit, share feedback, finalize, and publish a video all in one place?

Frame.io has the ability to leave comments on videos for feedback, test different formats, and more as a workspace solution for video projects.

YouTube acquiring a platform like this (or building its own) could help streamline the video creation process and continue to give the company value and leverage.

Thanks for reading, until next time.