Putting a new album on YouTube - or not?

[Richard deHove]

What's the current thinking on putting new tracks YouTube?

I've read that's it's a brilliant extra channel for people to discover music etc. But the reality is that a good YouTube music video is simply going to be downloaded as an MP3 which will be sufficient quality for most people.

But then if you don't upload to YouTube yourself then it's 100% certain someone else will and then you can choose whether to play whack-a-mole to get them removed.

So is it better to try to have a good quality video for each track so the "original artist" version gets the traffic - and then rely on the fact that there are still some people who will buy your CD?

And does this mean the importance of CDs is increased because the only point-of-difference you can offer is having a physical product for people to buy?

[el-bo (formerly ebow)]

What's the current thinking on putting new tracks YouTube?

I've read that's it's a brilliant extra channel for people to discover music etc. But the reality is that a good YouTube music video is simply going to be downloaded as an MP3 which will be sufficient quality for most people.

But then if you don't upload to YouTube yourself then it's 100% certain someone else will and then you can choose whether to play whack-a-mole to get them removed.

So is it better to try to have a good quality video for each track so the "original artist" version gets the traffic - and then rely on the fact that there are still some people who will buy your CD?

And does this mean the importance of CDs is increased because the only point-of-difference you can offer is having a physical product for people to buy?

You could take the risk of watermarking your audio. Put something in that sufficiently detracts from the listening experience, that would force someone who really wanted it to actually buy it
Of course, the risk is that you might put some people off

The trick would be to finding the right balance between sufficiently annoying and, "f**k you, If you don't want me to listen then I ain't buyin'!!"

Maybe a slight drop in volume every 50 seconds, for 3 seconds. This is much preferable to a white noise burst kinda thing. Maybe you could even play a message to buy at certain intervals

[Richard deHove]

I wouldn't dare annoy people that much! I like this style though - just a shot of the cover art. Makes the point quite gently:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uFrldNl6jq8

[4damind]

A complete album.. no. Some selected tracks yes or a preview version with all tracks but limited to eg. 30% of the original length.
Often it makes sense to put the strongest song of an release on Youtube to get some more interest for the complete album/EP. If the song is very good with a lot of clicks it makes also sense to activate monetization, so this can be another channel to make some money with your music.

If would not add watermarks or use a very bad quality etc. People are not stupid, they ignore such stuff and switching to the next video and you will lost some potentially new fans very quickly.
Keep in mind: if people really have such big interest to grab a song, they find a way.