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How To Grow Your Music YouTube Channel feat. Adriel Rivera

In this podcast episode I talk to Adriel Rivera (Show Your Genius) about how to grow your music YouTube channel, since he’s grown his to about 13,000 subscribers! We talk about content type, how long it takes, and how to stand out. We also talk about music marketing topics, and general life stuff as well.

Listen on your favorite Podcast platform

Important Points:

  • Adriel shares his journey to 100,000 Subscribers for her YouTube channel and how Adriel
    managed to double his audience in just three months. Adriel and Andrew emphasize the
    importance of creating top-notch content and making sure it’s helpful to viewers.
  • Adriel gives some tips on how to keep up with creating content, like using SEO to figure out
    what people want to see. He discusses with Andrew how to draw inspiration from other creators
    while still bringing something unique to the table. And also how having awesome cover art can
    help establish your brand!
  • Adriel and Andrew encourage other creators to keep at it and not give up when you are not
    getting the results that you want.

Podcast Outline:

[01:09] Adriel recaps how he started with the series Journey to 100,000 Subscribers- Adriel
[01:59] Andrew and Adriel talk about how they met each other on YouTube – Andrew & Adriel
[03:59] Adriel defines his music as teen pop, indie pop music that teens his age listen to- Adriel
[05:34] Inspired by the things he learns from his brother and the amount of music he’s already
making in 2015, Adriel started his YouTube channel- Adriel
[08:40] Initially, Adriel is hesitant to do tutorial videos because he wants to avoid being labeled
as a YouTuber- Adriel
[12:03] Adriel’s channel started with 5,000 subscribers at the beginning of the year, then
eventually, his community doubled because of his consistency in posting content- Adriel
[13:37] Andrew and Adriel agreed that quality content is important to truly engage your
community – Andrew & Adriel
[15:48] One of the key drivers of Adriel’s engagement is his Discord server-Andrew
[18:01] The kind of content that will draw people in are the ones that show you also care about
them and their experience- Adriel
[20:47] Christian Henderson’s YouTube videos are an example of entertaining and helpful
content – Andrew
[23:50] Adriel also utilizes Reddit for very specific content, like his tutorial of the 115 plug-ins in
FL Studio- Adriel
[25:12] Don’t hold back on doing content that someone else has already done because there
are many ways you can build on that and add something new and valuable- Adriel

[26:21] Andrew shares how he builds on content others have already done but giving his own
take to add an improvement
[27:53] Both Andrew and Adriel shared that even though you look for inspiration from other
content creators, make sure to fill in the gap that they didn’t cover
[28:53] SEO helped Adriel build a high-traffic YouTube channel- Adriel
[30:55] Adriel takes advantage of the YouTube algorithm for SEO by targeting people with the
same interests
[31:38] Adriel uses Tube Buddy, a Chrome extension that lets you see how much a search term
is searched for and how much competition there is- Adriel
[34:53] Andrew and Adriel both agree that video quality, especially sound, is important because
YouTube auto-generates the sound and incorporates it into captions – Andrew & Adriel
[35:45] Andrew recommends a similar tool to Tube Buddy, and it’s called Morning Fame –
Andrew
[39:38] Both love the Good Mythical Morning show and cite it as a great example of creating
quality content consistently- Andrew & Adriel
[44:13] Chilled Cow Nostalgia, Chill Nation, and Mr. Suicide Sheep grew their channel from
creating the same content over and over – Andrew & Adriel
[48:57] Adriel draws his own cover artwork for the channel using Photoshop and stock images
from Pixabay. Andrew uses Lightroom to enhance the color grade of the images – Andrew &
Adriel
[53:54] Andrew talks about how listeners don’t judge Spotify cover artworks but focus on the
playlist inside – Andrew
[55:30] Using cover artworks for your brand helps establish who you are as an artist- Adriel
[1:01] Adriel encourages listeners to not give up even though they can’t see the results soon
enough- Adriel

Wise Words:  

[15:48] You have great content, but you have a really engaged Discord server. And I think that’s
because of how you’ve cultivated a community around you. It’s not just about the content, it’s
about the fact that it’s you doing the content.- Andrew


[18:01] Everything is related to providing content to people, like providing value to people. If
you’re posting beats, if you really think about it, it’s all just me, me, me. Like, here’s a beat.
Listen to what I made. Like, here’s my music, listen to what I made. And that’s what I was doing
when I first started off. Nobody’s going to care because you’re not really showing that you care about them. You know…for example, tutorials are really great ‘ cause you’re like, ‘hey here’s the
things I know, let me provide it to you for free, so you can, you know, learn too’.-Adriel


[25:12] Even though somebody has already done something before, that doesn’t mean you can’t
do it again in your own way.- Adriel


[28:53] That’s how I started off my YouTube channel, and I still do SEO. You know, I still look for
things that people are looking for. I mean, I don’t know if you’ve ever talked about it on your
channel before, but that’s something that I tell people… SEO is what helped me start off my
YouTube.-Adriel


[1:01] There are so many times when I feel like I wanted to give up. Because I’m not getting the
results that I want to get, but you know, I look back at the things that I’ve done. I’m like, ‘you
know, if I had given up