YouTube launched its ‘premieres’ feature last year: a way for channels to schedule the launch of new videos, and thus drum up an audience to watch and chat together. It’s not a music-specific feature, but YouTube is keen to talk about how musicians have been using it.
For example Ariana Grande’s recent premiere of the video for ‘thank u, next’. “When the Premiere dropped at 12pm PT, on November 30, there were almost a million fans watching simultaneously at peak and 400,000 chat messages sent in the live chat,” blogged YouTube. “The video became the fastest on YouTube to earn 100 million views, reaching the milestone in under four days.”
The blog post offers this advice, too: “When artists leverage YouTube Premieres, the content is more likely to garner higher views compared to a normal video upload on YouTube,” it explained, citing Halsey’s recent ‘Without Me’ premiere as an example: “One of her biggest video debuts in viewership over the first 24hrs”.
Tools: platforms to help you reach new audiences
Tools: Kaiber
In the year or so since its launch, AI startup Kaiber has been making waves,…