Tobias Rauscher: If I upload a video, I have to be perfect. We have to go to the studio, we have to have color correction. It needs to be super cool because we are such a cool band. No, man, just take a phone, film yourself, this can work so much better. So don't be afraid, be imperfect and put your stuff out there. People like this.

Michael Walker: It's easy to get lost in today's music industry with constantly changing technology, and where anyone with a computer can release their own music. I'm going to share with you why this is the best time to be an independent musician, and it's only getting better. If you have high quality music but you just don't know the best way to promote yourself so that you can reach the right people and generate a sustainable income with your music, we're going to show you the best strategies that we're using right now to reach millions of new listeners every month without spending 10 hours a day on social media. We're creating a revolution in today's music industry, and this is your invitation to join me. I'm your host, Michael Walker.

Michael Walker: All right. So I'm here today with my good friend, Tobias. I called them so biased for the first year that I knew him, but he's from Germany and he goes by both names. He is the founder of Tube Accelerator. And he's a solo acoustic guitarist who it's got over 35 million views on YouTube and has got over 310,000 subscribers. I was doing some research on how many people is that, kind of conceptualize it, and it's more people than live in Orlando where I live. So literally, more subscribers than the entire city of Orlando, which is pretty incredible.

Michael Walker: And so today, I really wanted to focus on, as a musician, how can you grow a presence on YouTube? And I know Tobias is an expert at that. So dude, thanks for taking the time to hop on here today.

Tobias Rauscher: Yeah. Thanks for having me. Good to be talking to you, man.

Michael Walker: For sure. We went on a sailboat trip with our friend, Chris SD, so Tobias and I, we've had a chance to talk and we've had some deep metaphorical, spiritual conversations and stuff. So we've got to know each other pretty well at this point. So I already know your story, but could you give us a quick brief introduction of your story and how you got to this point where you got 35 million views on YouTube.

Tobias Rauscher: Yeah, absolutely. Basically, I started playing the guitar when I was 14. I had my own band back then, and we always wanted to make it big, but never really made it big. And then after my studies, I decided to work in the music industry, and I worked for Warner Music here in Germany, and I helped to promote artists like Bruno Mars and Dave Garrett here on the German market. That was basically a really great insight for me to really learn how the music industry really works and how important it is to promote and see your music like a business. And eventually, I decided that I still wanted to try to pursue my own career as an artist.

Tobias Rauscher: And at that time, I totally got into this modern percussive fingerstyle. This is when you just bang on your guitar, basically, and do all these crazy sounds. And then I really was like, "Okay. I now want to use my knowledge and really apply it to my own music and really see how it goes." It went really well. YouTube really helped me to grow a big audience, a fan base. I've been on tour in China, Taiwan, Singapore. I've been to a reality show in Los Angeles where it's just about basically helping musicians and marketing music with Baby Face, Walter Afanasieff, and really big people from the music industry. And I just learned a lot over there.

Tobias Rauscher: I felt more and more how important it is to focus on the online world because back then, we always just wanted... We were waiting for this one awesome song we can put out there and then we get magically discovered and we are famous, but this is not how it works. You have to put some work in there and you have to build up your fan base yourself. Otherwise, no label will ever pick you up. And then you don't even need a label anymore once you know how to market yourself, because then you can basically keep most of the profits yourself that you make from your music business, how I like to call it. So yeah, that's a whole story in a nutshell, basically.

Michael Walker: I love it, dude. I love what you said too, I feel like it's so important because I see it a lot too, is artists who feel like they're waiting for someone to come and save them or someone to come and take care of all that marketing and business stuff, like, "I'm just a creative, I don't even want to worry about it." And the problem is that, one, it's really, really hard for them to find someone to come and do that because they haven't built up anything successful on their own. So it sounds like one of the key insights that you learned as well is how valuable it is to start thinking about it like a business and to grow a certain level of success.

Michael Walker: Because then if you do decide to go with a record label or something, you have more clout, you have more credibility, you can get a better deal, more leverage. But at that point, you don't even necessarily need them as much because you have this thing growing on your own. That's awesome. So when it comes to like to building a presence online as a musician, and specifically YouTube, I know it's a really incredible platform for musicians. There's a lot of different options, now there's like TikTok and there's all of these different things that come out every other day. What is it about YouTube that you feel like really sets it apart and makes it a really valuable place for musicians to be?

Tobias Rauscher: In my opinion, YouTube is just one of the most valuable and best platforms you actually need to be on, because it works differently than Facebook, Instagram, and all the other platforms. And the really great thing is that, basically YouTube is your partner, they partner with their creators and they help you to spread the word or your music out there and get new followers on autopilot. And it's the other way around with Facebook and Instagram. These are still good channels, but they work differently. The way they work is, you have to continuously produce content, put it out there. And once you post a video, you have a spike, and it goes down, and that's it, it goes flat.

Tobias Rauscher: With YouTube, you basically upload a video, it's a spike, it might go down as well, but it keeps going, it keeps going, it keeps going, and it keeps even growing. Like one of my strongest video is still awake, and I uploaded it, I don't know, 10 years ago. And still every single day, I get thousands of views because of that video. And this is how basically the platforms differ. I did even a test, this is really interesting, with one of my songs, Passion Loop, and I uploaded this to YouTube, it has now around two million views or something like this. And when I did the test, it had around one million.

Tobias Rauscher: And I uploaded the very same video on Facebook as well, and the really interesting thing was, same video, both channels had a lot of audience. On YouTube, it had a watch time of over 60% on average, so the average watch time. So people watched more than half of it, which is quite good. On Facebook, same video as well, over 100,000 views, 7%. And you see, Facebook is just not for consuming music. It's like people scroll through their newsfeed, they just like have a short attention span. And on YouTube, it's the other way around, people take time, they listen to a music, they enjoy it. And this is the why as a musician, you definitely need to be on YouTube.

Tobias Rauscher: And as I said, it keeps growing and pushing your music. Like while we're talking right now, I can check my stats, I have a lot of people watching my videos, I don't do anything. And you don't have that with Facebook and Instagram. They have their own strength, especially if you go into the paid advertising because you have awesome targeting options, but just as a whole, still YouTube is just killing it. And I think every artist, musician, you have to be on YouTube. Every day, you get new fans, you get discovered. Make use of this.

Michael Walker: That's awesome. It sounds like really the main difference between YouTube and Facebook and Instagram, or a couple of the main benefits of it versus those is, one, that just in terms of consumption, YouTube, when people go to listen to music there, they're going to stick around for longer, they're going to watch 60, 70%. Even the way that they determine what's a view on YouTube is something like... What is it? After 15 seconds or 20 seconds is when they actually count it. Where on Facebook, it's three seconds or something where it's a little bit less mileage per view.3

Michael Walker: And in terms of longterm leverage, YouTube is something that... You have a song from 10 years ago that still you're getting thousands, thousands os views per day. Whereas with Facebook or Instagram, it's, you post it, and then it goes down in the newsfeed, and then it's gone, like almost instantly. And I think you're 100% right. The mistake that I see a lot of artists making is posting all the time on Facebook and Instagram. It's like a hamster wheel where there's just so much time and energy, and it's lower quality content too, because they're trying to do it so much and they're spreading themselves so thin.

Michael Walker: And so it sounds like with YouTube, it's more of a long-term strategy where it will stick around and the high quality content rises to the top and it continues to get traffic. Facebook and Instagram, they have different pros and cons. In terms of paid traffic, they can actually be really powerful and they can be good to be able to target and be able to drive traffic, usually away from Facebook and Instagram in order to really most benefit a musician. But in terms of just organic, being able to reach more people and build a real fan base, YouTube is a super powerful platform that everyone should be on.

Tobias Rauscher: Yeah. I forgot to mention as well that when it comes to how these platforms work, Facebook is kind of a gatekeeper. So of course they own your likes, let's say, and so they really cut down the organic reach. Like even now, my fan page has around 130,000 likes, but back then when I had just 5,000 likes, I got up to 1,000 likes per post, so I reached a lot of my audience. And then my audience grew, but my reach declined. And now, sometimes I'm posting a new snippet and I get 60 likes or something and just a few... and I'm like, "Are you freaking kidding me?" And then they're like, "Okay, boost your post. Pay me basically and then we will show you tomorrow."

Tobias Rauscher: And this is the other way with a YouTube, which I so enjoy, that they really keep on showing you videos and recommending your videos. So there's really a big difference as well. Yeah.

Michael Walker: That's so important. The artists that I work with, I don't even recommend just posting organically on Facebook because the organic reach is so bad. And I think most of your fans, they don't realize that Facebook sucks for organic reach. Maybe they do, maybe they don't. All they know is just that there's not very many people engaging with it. I do think there's a place for Facebook and Instagram, they're really powerful tools, but then it comes into the paid traffic and the automation and building funnels and things around that. And that can be really powerful, but yeah, it's a pay to play when, and you need to have a system built and you need to have a metric system, and to know what your numbers are and to build a system around it. And it's more than just boosting a post.

Michael Walker: As opposed to YouTube, you don't have to pay in order to reach people. And if you have a lot of subscribers, you're actually going to reach those people as opposed to posting it and reaching a very small percentage of them.

Tobias Rauscher: Great insight as well. You don't only reach your subscribers. Like the video I just uploaded a few weeks ago, I just checked and I get much more views from people who are not subscribed to my channel, and that is a great thing that will probably never happen on YouTube because YouTube keeps on showing and suggesting your video, other people who are potential fans who might like your music, and they discover you through YouTube. YouTube is proactively pushing your video out there. And when it comes to Facebook organically, you're fighting to reach only your own subscribers, so it's kind of this Gary Vee effect.

Tobias Rauscher: I mean, I like Gary Vee, and he's an awesome guy, just about putting out content, content, content, it's a full-time job. If you just put out content and you're just working your ass off to basically post content, like you said, but nobody sees it and nobody cares, it's just like hamster wheel, you just have to keep on doing it. And with YouTube, I upload five to 10 videos per year, it's crazy. It's not a lot of videos, but still each video brings in constantly new views. And even in 10 years from now, people will watch my videos that I recorded right now, or even years ago. And so it's incomparable, it's really powerful.

Michael Walker:

Beautiful. With our bands, we had like 17 million views on YouTube, and it was a huge platform for us, and I was so valuable. I know YouTube is really important. Now hopefully everyone that's listening is like, "Okay, cool. I'm on the YouTube train. I really want to dig into it." What are some of the biggest challenges or some of the mistakes that you see when musicians get started trying to build a YouTube presence?

Tobias Rauscher: What I see a lot is that people give up easily. They put out a video and they expect it to get a lot of views within a few weeks. And then if this video doesn't get a lot of views, they're like, "Ah, YouTube sucks. It doesn't work." But it is a long-term strategy for sure. It's like this bamboo tree story where the tree isn't growing at all, but then after four years, it's growing like crazy. It had grown the roots all the time. And it's the same with YouTube, it took a while for my channel to take off, but then like a snowball, it gets stronger and stronger and stronger.

Tobias Rauscher: So you definitely have to keep posting videos over there. Not that often though, but here, one really... There're several things actually. First is not having optimized videos, that's what I see so often. If you don't have correct metadata, you use the wrong tags, you don't optimize anything. This is one important thing. And the other one is the kind of content. Sometimes I see really low quality content, and people expect this to work, but this is not the way. You have to have good videos. And it doesn't mean good by polished videos, super fancy productions. Not at all.

Tobias Rauscher: You can have super well-working cell phone videos, but it's about this, what's inside the video? It needs to trigger this kind of emotion in you, which is this primal desire to share it, like this, "I need to show this to my friends. This is awesome." You can be a drummer drumming on buckets, or you can, I don't know, you can play the guitar with five people, just something funny, and it just picks up and people love this. So have this spark, this wow factor that people like. And then combined with proper optimization and promotion, this is really a great blueprint and it works.

Tobias Rauscher: You have several factors. It's always like on this little padlocks with three different numbers that have to match, and it's not always one. If you optimize your video perfectly, it doesn't mean it will take off you. It needs to be good video, it needs to be well optimized, and promoted in a great way. And if you have these three variables in place, you drastically increase your chances for success. So it's always three factors that you need to focus on.

Michael Walker: I love it. It sounds like the three main factors when it comes to building a successful presence on YouTube, and one mistake that a lot of people make is just not understanding the way that the platform works in the first place, in terms of it being a long-term play, expecting it's like, you have to put it out, and instantly, you're going to have hundreds of thousands of views. But it really is kind of like planting a seed. You can plant the seeds and you've got to nurture it and you water it, and it starts to grow. And like bamboo, at a certain point it goes, "Whoosh," and just shoots way up really quickly.

Michael Walker: When it comes to the types of content to create and how to be successful on it, there's a couple of different things that you're... One is really making sure that you understand how to optimize it correctly in terms of the metadata and in terms of the tagging. Maybe we can dig a little bit deeper into that a little bit, but one thing that I'd love to pick your brain on a little bit more is, the other thing you talked about was having the content of the video, not necessarily needing to be the most polished or you need to spend like $10,000 on a video budget. In fact, a lot of times, music videos, people spend tens of thousands of dollars and they flop because they don't really have that wow factor, that viral tendency behind it.

Michael Walker: Could you tell me a little bit more about that viral tendency? What makes that up? And that wow factor, is there a framework or an idea for how do you create content like that?

Tobias Rauscher: The thing is, you have to connect to your audience and to wow them. And what a polished music video does, it creates a disconnect from your audience. You have several shots here and there, you're in fancy places, awesome skylines. But it's like, "Yeah, well, that's cool, but I'm not part of this. I'm not connected." And just imagine you have, I don't know, a great artist like The Weeknd with his friends and the few are people on the streets doing music. And it's like, "Whoa, that's cool." You have a connection to them. And this triggers much more emotion inside of you, and this is the emotion that makes you share videos. Just remember, what kind of videos did you share?

Tobias Rauscher: Well, I remember what I share. Like the last thing, it was during the coronavirus, some awesome saxophone player playing The Dance Monkey song on the streets. And it was awesome. And it was so cool. But I wouldn't have to shared it if you had a proper production, because then it's like, "Yeah, of course. It's perfect and all good." But if it's this relatable, emotional, and there's a connection. This is really important. And then if you can't include a wow factor in this, or in there, then you're killing it. What I do with my videos, it's always quite technical, it's kind of fancy. And people are like, "Wow, how is he doing this? I need to share this with my friends."

Tobias Rauscher: Because people feel better when they feel they discovered this artist or they were the first who saw this awesome drummer killing it with just like some paint buckets on the streets. And they're like, "What the hell is he doing? I need to show this to all my friends." Because then, it lifts my status up within my friends circle and whatsoever. And you have to trigger this emotional thing. Don't just amaze with polished and awesome stuff, really trigger it with relatable videos and wow factor, and this can really work wonder. And it can be even shot with an iPhone our a camera phone. It doesn't matter. It doesn't need to be high quality.

Tobias Rauscher: And the funny thing I noticed is... Lastly, I was producing more well-produced videos. I went into the studio in Berlin, the YouTube studio. If you check on my song, Clarity, nice setting, everything. But the videos I shot at home with a single camera kill all the other professional videos. So it's really what I noticed on my own videos that the more let's say, amateur, the set up is, the better they work. It just more relatable, I think, than having a super fancy gimbal and all that stuff, and the lights. So the next videos will be just, again, in my living room, just one camera and a mic, and I will record myself.

Tobias Rauscher: Because I don't need a fancy setup and pay thousands to have polished videos that they don't work as well as just amateur, nice relatable videos. So that's, I think an important thing. And it takes a lot of pressure, I think, off a lot of artists, because so many people think, "If I upload a video, I have to be perfect. We have to go to the studio. We have to have color correction. It needs to be super cool because we are such a cool band. No, man, just take a phone, film yourself to a cappella version. This can work so much better. So don't be afraid, be imperfect and put your stuff out there. People like this.

Michael Walker: I love that, dude. That's so important because I think you're 100% right. A lot of people, we hold ourselves back, and it's mostly out of fear. It's out of fear of failing or out of being seen a certain way, or being imperfect. So I think you're 100% right. You're imperfectly putting yourself out there. The most important thing isn't necessarily the setup and how professional it is. I think it is interesting in some cases that literally the exact opposite, so being more amateur can actually in some cases make it even better. But the takeaway that I get from it is that way, way, way less important than the polished and the professional sheen, is really the content and is the value and the connectiveness to it, where it makes you feel something.

Michael Walker: But then that moment where it's kind of like, "Whoa," or it's like, "What? What just happened?" And that's the kind of thing that makes you want to share it with someone else because of subconscious things where we want to improve our status, but really we just want to share it. So when it comes to those wow moments, those things, I find that topic really fascinating, the viral virality, that equation. I've heard some different ways of describing it, but it seems one of the keys or one of the elements of that sometimes is taking an expectation or taking something that you're expecting to be a certain way, and then just you flip it on its side.

Michael Walker: So then people, they're going into it thinking one thing. And then all of a sudden, it's like, "Boom." And that's one of the things that can create the wow. And so with you and with your fingerstyle playing, I think what that feels to me is it's like, "Oh, cool. It's someone with an acoustic guitar, they're going to play something. And all of a sudden they're like... And you're playing around, just killing it with the fingerstyle playing. And I'm like, 'Dang, that's super cool." And it's the music too, just the way you play it and the emotion behind it that really does allow you to connect with people. One idea that... I heard this from someone else who's probably way smarter than I am when it comes to viral stuff.

Michael Walker: I think it was an article that was published in Forbes or something, that was talking about what makes things go viral. And they pointed exactly to what you talked about with things that are familiar, they tap in with something, especially if it's trending right now. If there's something that the global, the world right now, it's a topic, it's a current conversation, the coronavirus, there's something that's just very current right now that people can relate to. So that's one element, it plugs into it. But then there's the other element of the wow, the shift, the twist, the thing that makes us go, "Oh, I wasn't expecting that."

Michael Walker: And apparently, there's some dopamine release or there's something that happens when we have that... it's familiar plus unique twist. Do you have any thoughts on how you can utilize and plug in to the current ways and what's happening right now in a unique way, or what are your thoughts when it comes to creating that type of content?

Tobias Rauscher: Definitely a really good point. What I would always do is to look for inspiration. So right now, for example, what's trending on YouTube, be it the coronavirus or whatever, even if we don't have a global pandemic, still, go on YouTube, check what is going well. Or even artists who are like, let's say The Weeknd is publishing a new single soon or new album, you can wiretap traffic from that and go for that. Make an acoustic version out of it, or a parody video out of it. So to basically take a chunk of the success because you know once the new single or whatever will be published, it goes, "Boom," you have millions of dollars in ad budget that are behind this to push it around the world. And so many people will search for it, they will check it out.

Tobias Rauscher: And once you've seen it and then you see another video popping up like, "Oh, here's a cool acoustic or piano cover version," or whatever, or a funny version with a twist a jazz version out of this song or whatsoever. This is always super powerful and works so well on YouTube. So always make sure to follow trends. It can work really wonders.

Michael Walker: Oh, what's up guys? A quick intermission from the podcast so I can tell you about an awesome free gift that I have for you. I wanted to share something that's not normally available to the public, that normally we reserve for our $5,000 clients that we work professionally. This is a presentation called Six Steps To Explode Your Fanbase And Make A Profit With Your Music Online. And specifically, we're going to walk through how to build a paid traffic and automated funnel, that's going to grow your fan base online in a system designed to get you to your first $5,000 a month with your music. We've invested over $130,000 in the past year to test out different traffic sources and different offers, and really see what's working best right now for musicians.

Michael Walker: And so I think it's going to be hugely valuable for you. And so if that's something you're interested in, in the description, there should be a little link that you click on to go get that. And the other thing I wanted to mention is, if you want to do us a huge favor, one thing that really makes a big difference early on when you're creating a new podcast is if people click subscribe, then it basically lets the algorithm know that this is something that's new and noteworthy and that people actually want to hear, and so that'll help us reach a lot more people. So if you're getting value from this and you get value from the free trainings, then if you want to do us a favor, I'd really appreciate you clicking the Subscribe button. All right, let's get back to the podcast.

Michael Walker: What you'd recommend is when it comes to that strategy, just using YouTube tools to see what's trending right now, especially in the music world. And if you can take a song that is currently has millions and tens of millions of budget in terms of advertising and I like what you're trying, like wiretap, wire-tapping it, but do it in a way that it's not like you're literally just creating a complete clone of the original song, but you're doing it in a unique way.

Michael Walker: It's either like an acoustic cover version or cool piano rendition, or something that takes the original song and adds this different unique element to it, kind of adds your own brand to it. And that can be a really effective way to pull traffic for free from some of those sources.

Tobias Rauscher: Absolutely. Absolutely. And always, if you do an extreme, that's really working well, for example, I had one, I forgot the name, I bet, but they basically do really soft, nice acoustic covers of actually heavy metal and really metalcore songs, but I love them. It's cool because it gives the same song that you love such a different twist or the other way around. Like the song Blinding the Lights of The Weeknd, got covered by a band which is called, Rising Insane, I think. Check them out on YouTube, Rising Insane Blinding Lights.

Tobias Rauscher: And they make a basically a rock metalcore cover all of the shouting parts. And I'm loving this song, I'm just hearing it all day long and it's just such a beautiful different version of it. So this works always so well because you can interpret songs in such different ways. We just create it, we're artists, we be creative. There are so many things you can do. So definitely, definitely, yeah, use this, it works.

Michael Walker: That's awesome. What it reminds me of too is pop goes punk. Our band was pop rock, pop punk, but some of my favorite, I love listening to those pop rock, pop goes punk albums because it was something... It felt like it resonated with me because it was in the style of punk, but it was those pop songs that were familiar and unique. It was that same twist. I guess this leads me to another question too, is I've heard from quite a few artists and sometimes I think it can be a limiting belief, but I also think there's an element of truth or their intentions, where do they fall in the sense that they don't want to be perceived as a cover artist on YouTube.

Michael Walker: For example, there's certain channels where it's like, their whole shtick is doing covers of songs in different styles. And that can be a really smart thing to do because it's great for brand consistency, and if you go to the channel, you know what you're getting in this cover songs. And a lot of people I talk to they're like, "Well, I don't want to necessarily be a cover artist." How do you speak to that in terms of, is there a balance of how do they... Can I still incorporate those strategies and be successful without necessarily needing to just do covers on YouTube?

Tobias Rauscher: First of all, I would say, I don't want to offend anyone, but that's your ego speaking. If you say, "I don't want to be like this. It's about your fans if it's cool. And the limiting belief, like Rick Eckhart Tolle on this, The Power of Now or the New Earth, awesome books, which are basically just about reducing your ego and all that stuff. It's art, it's music, why shouldn't it be awesome if you have your own interpretation of a great song. Even Rihanna, the songs for Rihanna, Diamonds or whatever, Rihanna didn't wrote, she's just a performer basically.

Tobias Rauscher: So it's just like, see it more like be more flexible. And I wouldn't really mind about this, do whatever makes fun, what do whatever your fans like, and if you want to grow a big audience on YouTube, which helps you in the long run, it helps do covers and then just do it. And don't think about what people like or don't like, or whatsoever. I would just basically do it and don't limit myself. But I would say, a lot of artists do it, for example, Arising Insane or other bands who have one or two cover versions, but still a lot of their own, let's say, 90%, their own music, but still they put out some cover versions and it helps so much to get traffic.

Tobias Rauscher: And these people who watch your cover version, then check out the other songs as well. So it's just a win-win there. I think there is no downside on this, except that you might feel, you don't want to be an artist like this, but even really famous artists cover...And I wouldn't limit myself, be flexible and be open. And that's my take on it.

Michael Walker: I absolutely, dude. First of all, I love the fact that you brought up Eckhart Tolle, Eckhart Tolle is like... I feel like when we were having conversations on the sailboat, we talked about Eckhart Tolle a little bit, but it sounds like your point of view on it is that as artists, we have to learn how to let go of our egos and to be able to stretch, and to be who we are, but to do it in a way that we don't have to limit ourselves to a certain image, we can play around, we can have fun. We can do covers, we can experiment with new things.

Michael Walker: And in terms of the benefit of doing some of these cover songs, is just, it's so valuable in terms of the traffic that you can get from it. And you can do it as much as you'd like to, you can have a couple of songs, you can do 90% original songs, you can have a few cover songs that you do. And I know for our band too, that was exactly what we did. We did mostly original songs, but we had four or five cover songs that had three or 4 million views. And that was a huge benefit in terms of bringing new people in that would like the rest of our songs. So I 100% agree.

Michael Walker: I think it's something that is so valuable that it'd be a mistake not to start utilizing some of those strategies in order to deliver more value and do something that your fans are going to find really cool, and to be able to bring new people in your audience. So man, another thing I'd love to dive into a little bit, and this is a little bit more on the technical side, and you talked about one component, one big pillar is what we just talked about is really about the content, the virility of it, making sure it's valuable.

Michael Walker: And another big one is the optimization, so making sure it's tagged correctly, the metadata. Could you share a little bit about, what's that process like?

Tobias Rauscher: Yeah, definitely. I can share, for example, a strategy that I use, basically wiretap traffic from certain videos, and I teach this as well in detail in my free training videos that you can get. It's basically how I started with this. And I saw a video by a John Butler called Ocean, awesome song.

Michael Walker: Dude, I love that video so much. Was that the one where he's playing an acoustic and it's got super long nails? It just lose it. Oh, it's so good.

Tobias Rauscher: Yeah. It's an awesome song. So if you haven't checked that out, check out this tune, it's awesome. And I was like, "Wow, okay. I just love it." And I thought like, "Okay, people who this kind of music, probably like my music as well." So I was like, "Okay, how can I put myself in front of these people if I would play with him on the show or whatsoever?" And I started basically using a tag strategy, and what I did was that I optimized my videos texts for this video. So what I did was I took, for example, his name and the song name, used it in my text, but used some of the texts he was using in my video as well to show YouTube that both our videos belong to the same channel cluster.

Tobias Rauscher: And YouTube is basically, it's a bit more a technical right here, but it's based around channel clusters. For example, here in Germany, we have a first, the same YouTube, but we have a German YouTube, big cluster. And within this cluster, there are several clusters, it can be sports cluster, and music, and guitar, makeup, whatsoever. So you have channel clusters. And basically, YouTube suggest videos within channel clusters that are related. And the other important thing is that basically, you have to have a good watch time, otherwise, nothing works.

Tobias Rauscher: If you have a bad video, you can optimize as much as you want, it just won't work. But if you have a good video, and my video sort of way, it work great, what I did was, you can check out the texts in a video, you could just do a right click then click on Page Source, and then you can, I think it's, command F or something, and then you can search for keywords and then you'll see the text or you can use a tool like vidIQ or something, and you see the text and video he's using. And you basically use some of these texts and then you have increased your chances basically, that your video, if it has a good watch time, gets recommended.

Tobias Rauscher: And what happened then or suggested was that after a while, my video is still awake, got always made it in the right-hand column with a suggested videos. And I started to get more and more traffic and views from that video, really, like thousands of views and 10 or 100,000 of views. And just because I optimized this video for that video, and this is what I always recommend, make sure that you use the right tags, and there are different strategies as well. And what I see a lot of artists doing, it's like, what do they put in the text? Their name, the name of the location, the name of their country.

Tobias Rauscher: This doesn't mean anything to YouTube, this doesn't get you more views. You need to use texts probably, and then use keywords in your description as well. But I mentioned this already, sometime it's like, if you have some knowledge about SEO, it works differently on YouTube than in online marketing or when it comes to blogging. And a lot of marketers out there who have courses on how to YouTube, basically just one-on-one use SEO principles on YouTube, but this doesn't work because the most traffic you get on YouTube is not from people finding you, especially not from artists, it's YouTube suggesting your videos to other people.

Tobias Rauscher: And this is so important. Most of my views, over power of 50% comes from YouTube suggesting my videos to people, bringing in people. People are not searching for my name or for fingerstyle guitar. It's suggested videos. This is such important point or fact that you have to keep in mind, and then see how you can optimize on that so that YouTube suggests you to more people, more and more. And this is how you can use texts to your advantage. And basically, wiretap traffic from videos that are within the same channel cluster, and that can bring you views.

Michael Walker: Dude, that's awesome. As you were describing the channel cluster thing, it's a like big brain, isn't it? It's just like a big brain that they're creating with these different clusters, the same way our neurons work, and they jump between on different points. So really, the strategy is finding those videos that you think if they like this, then I think they'll like my music too. Obviously, having a good video, doesn't necessarily have to be super professional, but it has to be a good quality video like we talked about earlier, having that's important.

Michael Walker: But in terms of helping you to helping their algorithm identify it as like, "This is part of the same cluster," the way you do that is by looking at the text description, the stuff that they put in there, and also the tags. In order to find the tags, you can either if you're technically minded, you can right click and say, view page source, and then search for it within there, or there's a tool, what was that tool that you said? vidIQ.

Tobias Rauscher: VidIQ, yeah.

Michael Walker: Cool. So you can use a tool vidIQ to basically look at the tags. And then when you're uploading your videos, then you can enter in the tags. I know you have that free workshop that goes into a lot more detail and actually screen shares and shows step-by-step how you do this. And I think that's going to be really helpful, especially for people that need some help on the tech side of it. But it sounds like the text is a big thing, maybe the description, the tags. The biggest thing too, like an aha that they just gave me was that, the majority of your views actually come from suggested videos from the recommendations, they're not coming from people searching for it.

Michael Walker: So it's not necessarily a purely SEO thing, it's more about YouTube compartmentalizing you and saying that you belong in the same cluster as this other video. Did I get everything there? Did I recap that? Or is there a piece I was missing with the-

Tobias Rauscher: Yeah. I think you got it everything right, but there's just one important thing basically, and that is, to understand how YouTube's algorithm really works, because this is like, if you understand that, it's much easier to optimize your videos and really get views. And the basic thing is, like any platform, YouTube sell advertising space, so real estate for advertisers. So you can promote your company or whatever there, you pay YouTube money and they show it. And the longer people stay on the platform, the more feature you can show, and the more money they can make.

Tobias Rauscher: And if you help YouTube to keep people longer on the platform, and you do this by having good videos, YouTube rewards you by showing you videos to more people, because for example, if they know, "Hey, this guy over there, he has a really high watch time, and people who saw one of his videos watch 10 other videos of him. So we should show more people his video, because then these people stay longer on the platform and we can earn more revenue by showing ads." So this is a really basic fundamental principle how YouTube works.

Tobias Rauscher: And so this is important to understand for everything that comes, because you just have to focus on keeping people on the platform, and you do this by having good content and being well discovered by the algorithm, so basically talking to the algorithm, if you will, and then YouTube basically does the job of promotion for you. And this is the power why we should use it because then we don't have to do anything, and YouTube keeps promoting us because we help YouTube keep people on the platform. So this is a foundation why this strategy works.

Michael Walker: That's really valuable to understand because sometimes a mistake that I see artists make is that, there are certain platforms where it's paid traffic, paid advertising can work really well. If you have a good funnel, if you have a good strategy, you can do stuff with Facebook and Instagram, and it's great, but with YouTube, maybe there is, maybe I just haven't quite discovered yet, but for the reason that you're putting right now, a big mistake I've seen artists make is, we'll spend a lot of money sometimes to get 100,000 views on their YouTube video, but then you look at it and there's not really any comments below it, the engagement is weird, for the exact reason that you just brought up.

Michael Walker: It's probably a poor strategy because those 100,000 views, they probably bounced off relatively quickly because it was just ads, it was kind of cold traffic. And then it tells YouTube, "Oh, there's not people aren't really watching this." So they show it to less people, which is where you want to get the majority of your views from on YouTube. So it sounds like that really shifts the mindset going into it. To make it, the most important thing is really about watch time and thinking about, how can I increase the watch time per video?

Michael Walker: And one of the best ways to do that is by making high quality content that keeps people watching and making sure that the people that you send to it are people that are a really good fit for it and are people who are likely to stick around and to watch it.

Tobias Rauscher: Yeah. The worst thing you can do, if you just buy fake views, they're even not really fake, because sometimes they sell real people that watch your video, but they are not interested. They click on it basically, watch your 10 seconds and click away. And what signal does that send to YouTube? You video sucks because everyone is skipping your three-minute video, is clicking away after 10 seconds. So why in the world should YouTube promote your video? Nobody likes it. And this is a danger, and it's not about the view count in the first place, it's about the watch time.

Tobias Rauscher: So if people jump off quickly, your video is not working. Why should YouTube promote it? Why should you promote it? Why should everyone watch it if it's just not working well? So this is really important. So you cannot really trick YouTube's algorithm, you have to work with it and then it can boost everything out of there and it works well.

Michael Walker: Cool. That's what I love about YouTube too, is I feel it's a really good indicator of true connection or true value or true presence because usually, it's pretty easy to tell when someone's trying to fake it and other engagement's all out of whack. And it does seem it's really organic and it's authentic and it's a great way to build a real presence, even though it is long term, it's not get rich quick kind of thing, it's worth building some roots there. Probably my last question for you is...

Michael Walker: Another thing that I see a lot of artists on with YouTube is they come into it thinking that their end game is that they're going to monetize their YouTube, that they're going to make a really good income or their full-time living from like, if they get enough views on YouTube, then they're making it from ads. I think you know this really well is that, maybe that's not going to be the best revenue generator for them, but there are other ways that they can take an audience. If you have an audience, the possibilities are so limitless for you to be able to monetize that.

Michael Walker: How do you speak to people when it comes to, they're like, "Okay, once I do build a presence and I have a good viewership on YouTube, how do I start to monetize that successfully?"

Tobias Rauscher: Yeah. The first thing is, YouTube ads, like the ad revenue you get, don't count on this. Like for a million, a million views, it's a lot of views, a million views, you get around, if you're lucky, 1,000 bucks, but it's ridiculous for the amount of traffic of use your get. And you need as a musician, you need to monetize your traffic in a different way. So the most important thing is in any way, build an email list or attract your own email list. There's where the magic happens, where you sell your products, where you have all of your funnels.

Tobias Rauscher: This is key, and this is where you can use YouTube for, but really don't do it for the ad revenue. It can be nice if you have a successful channel, you get a few bucks, maybe you can pay your rent or whatsoever, this is not what I would focus on. So it's all about using that traffic and building your own email list where everything happens. There is where the money lies, where you sell products, where you launch your album too, and not the traffic on YouTube. So don't do it for the few bucks you get on YouTube.

Michael Walker: Awesome. So really looking at it as a traffic source and a way to connect with people and to build a following, but getting people onto your email list is probably a much better way to actually monetize it and to sell merchandise or products. What are some of the best ways to make that transition from YouTube email lists? Do you offer, in our online marketing world, we call it a lead magnet or something, but what have you found has been the most effective way to take people, fans of the music on YouTube and bring them onto your email list?

Tobias Rauscher: What I do is, for example, sometimes I upload as well tutorial, so guitar tutorials, to get people who are interested in playing and then promote my online guitar academy, which is basically, I run an online guitar academy where I teach people how to play this crazy stuff. And then I of course, use YouTube to send them to my list. I have a free workshop or I have some lessons, like a seven-day guitar challenge, a fingerstyle guitar challenge or a percussive acoustic guitar challenge. And then people go through that, then they are on my email list and then they can join my academy or not or buy my album or buy my tabs or whatsoever.

Tobias Rauscher: And then I have a completely different connection with them, and then I can send them free tutorial, school staff. And so I always try first to get people off of YouTube, and it's of course, great for brand-building. That is maybe a fact we didn't talk about upon. It's basically, you get a lot of requests, like you get endorsement deals, a lot of people ask you to play on shows all around the world. So this is a huge benefit I don't want to neglect. So this is basically a byproduct that comes, but as well, using the traffic, getting them off YouTube and on your email list and then having basically your brand, which is out there.

Tobias Rauscher: And it's like, when people check you out and they see, oh, you have a lot of following. Even if you want to get a label, if you say, "Okay, I don't want to be an independent artist, I want to be a label." Just imagine if you apply for a label or get in touch with them and you have millions of views, that's such a strong signal. And even if you want to play a show and you're like, "Hey, this is my YouTube channel." They check you out, you're on a different level, you're on eye level, and not like, "Understand, I don't have many followers. Please, let me play or spy me or whatsoever." This usually never works. And these are the biggest benefits I think of YouTube.

Michael Walker: Absolutely, dude. The power, the benefit, the leverage that you have from having an audience, and YouTube is one of those signals for the people in the industry who would know, because the people who are in the industry who are looking at this, they know when it's legit and they know when it's not. And being able to look at that and to see that is really, really powerful. I agree, that's huge benefit. And when it comes to getting people off of YouTube, and on your email list, for you, and this is awesome, and I think it makes total sense that one of your revenue streams from your YouTube is from people seeing you play these incredible songs with the guitar, with the hand style and the one on learn how to do that.

Michael Walker: And what it sounds like to me is, and the way that I would help to add to this answer too, is that ultimately, what you offer and how you monetize it, is going to depend on what do they find valuable and how can you deliver something that they want? And so that's ultimately going to be the first question that you start thinking about when you think about like getting them on your email list and then starting to offer them things, is you have to actually figure out like, "What do they actually want? Like what do they value?"

Michael Walker: So, for you, that was something that very smartly, you assessed the market and you probably have people reaching out and they're like, "Hey, we want this." Or, "Can we have this, this and this?" And so you're like, "Oh cool." So you were able to tap in to that. If you're a musician, then as like a lead magnet, there's a lot of different things that you could offer that people want. And ultimately, your merchandise is going to be something that's probably, at least in terms of the online stuff, is going to be something that you're going to want to develop as a revenue stream.

Michael Walker: And one thing that we found is working really well for artists right now is having a private community. Even like your email list, you could label it as an inner circle or a private community or something where you share like behind the scene. Before the songs even come out, maybe you have some demos or you do live streams. There's just this private community that you don't want to share stuff publicly yet, but it's like they're part of the seed group. Then that could be something that you invite people to, is like, "Hey, join the private community." Or maybe you get a free merch bundle or get a free starter pack.

Michael Walker: And it could either be like a digital thing that they get for free, or it could be like a free plus shipping type-of-offer where they get a free little cool merch bundle with a handwritten note from you and they just pay for the shipping and handling for it. That's another thing that works really well. But ultimately, what you pointed out, I think the most important thing is finding out, what did they find valuable? And even talking to them, asking them like, "What do you want?" And listening to what they're saying. And you don't have to skip ahead. In order for you to monetize it, there needs to be something to monetize, there needs to be an audience.

Michael Walker: Sometimes people might want to skip before they plant the seeds, before the tree starts to grow, that's what needs to happen before the fruits start to fall. But ultimately, that process can happen naturally as long as you have the audience, you're focused on delivering value, and then you find out what do they want that they can offer?

Tobias Rauscher: Absolutely.

Michael Walker: Tobias. I love talking with you, man, your energy is, you're like vibrating at a really high level. So I always enjoy our conversations. I appreciate you taking the time to be here today. I know that you've got your free workshop that basically walks through in more details and screen shares and show them how to actually set up some of optimization stuff. Where's a good place for people to go check that out?

Tobias Rauscher: Basically if you go to fanbaseacademy.com, is basically the new domain I have, and you can directly sign up to the Tube Accelerator with the free videos you get over there. And yeah, that's where I teach you exactly how you can wiretap traffic and how I generated these views. And of course, if you want, you can join my program, but it's totally optional, but yeah, fanbaseacademy.com. And if you're a guitarist, go and check out Fingerstyle Academy. So yeah, Fanbase Academy and Fingerstyle Academy are basically the both places where you can get either online lessons or music marketing stuff and YouTube stuff, and how you can basically grow your fanbase.

Michael Walker: Beautiful. Just to make it really easy, we're going to put the link in the button below here, so you can click on that and it'll take you right to the freebie.

Tobias Rauscher: Awesome. Thank you.

Michael Walker: Well, dude, thank you so much for taking the time, man. I really appreciate it.

Tobias Rauscher: Yeah, sure. See you. Bye-bye.

Michael Walker: Hey, it's Michael here. I hope that you got a ton of value out of this episode. Make sure to check out the show notes to learn more about our guest today. And if you want to support the podcast, then there's few ways to help us grow. First, if you hit subscribe, then I'll make sure you don't miss a new episode. Secondly, if you share it with your friends on your social media, tag us, that really helps us out. And third, best of all, if you leave us an honest review, it's going to help us reach more musicians like you who want to take the music career to the next level. The time to be a modern musician is now, and I look forward to seeing you on our next episode.