The case for bringing more musicians and music-industry execs to VidCon

By: Cherie Hu

Published: 2021-01-11

Happy Friday!

Before going into this piece: I’m excited to share that I just published my debut feature for NPR Music, as part of their phenomenal series this week about the future of music. My contribution to the series is a mix of original reporting and speculative fiction, in which I exchange letters with my 2040 self to understand how biometrics and psychometrics will transform music streaming — and, in turn, how that will warp our relationship with health, privacy and culture. I talked about this idea a little bit during the previous Benefactor video hangout, and really appreciate all the feedback everyone gave then!

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Here are two statements that I think many of you will agree with me on:

Assuming these two statements are true, I find it personally baffling that musicians and music execs aren’t included more in public conversations about the future of “influencer marketing.”

For instance, I recently heard from an acquaintance in the music business that no one from YouTube Music was present at the 2019 edition of VidCon, one of the world’s largest gatherings of online video/digital creators. Celebrating its 10th anniversary this year, VidCon attracts over 30,000 attendees annually — from teen internet celebrities and their hordes of screaming fans, to budding creators wanting to hone their business chops, to outside brands and advertisers looking to craft more effective campaigns in the ever-shifting influencer landscape.

In general, mainstream music companies do get involved in VidCon and similar conferences — but only for the purpose of giving artists on their rosters a stage to perform. YouTube has brought several stars to headline its own “Onstage” showcase at VidCon over the years, including Meghan Trainor (2019), Marshmello (2018) and Jason Derulo (2017); Lil Nas X performed at BuzzFeed’s inaugural Internet Live event this week, and will be headlining TwitchCon later this year.

Actual industry-facing discussions about the future of digital influencers and creators, however, seems to be a completely different matter. Going back to YouTube’s VidCon presence as an example: I confirmed that several of YouTube’s product managers, plus executives overseeing FameBit and YouTube Originals, were included in the event’s speaker lineup — but no one from YouTube Music, the team that oversees one of the largest categories on the video platform by views and engagement.

And it’s not just YouTube’s issue; aside from the handful of concerts that took place during the day, artists and the music industry in general seemed to be absent from virtually all of VidCon’s programming. There were countless panels on the 2019 agenda that could have benefited from a music perspective — including but not limited to the evolution of YouTube, growth hacking on YouTube, copyright management, building an authentic brand on TikTok and international video consumption trends — but featured no music expert in sight.

One of the only discussions I could find that highlighted speakers from the music industry was at VidCon’s London offshot in February 2019, which featured a panel about the music industry’s evolving relationship with digital video (moderated by Sammy Andrews, whom I recently interviewed for my podcast).

I think this gap in representation is understandable, but nonetheless outdated in our current media era where users are consuming multiple types of content together on the same platform.

There are three main reasons why I think the music industry should have a greater presence in conversations about influencer marketing, which I list below:

1) Keeping music out of the conversation undersells its influence.

The word “influencer” is sufficiently vague that you could make the argument that the modern influencer/creator era is just an old concept in new clothes. As Kevin Roose recently wrote for the New York Times: “In truth, influencers have been running the world for years. We just haven’t called them that. Instead, we called them ‘movie stars’ or ‘talk-radio hosts’ or ‘Davos attendees.’ The ability to stay relevant and attract attention to your work has always been critical.”

On virtually any dominant video platform active today, music excels at precisely this: helping people stay relevant and attract measurable attention.

Let’s look at YouTube: according to Pex, while “Music” videos accounted for only 5% of total content on YouTube in 2018, the category generated 20% of all views. Over 80% of all YouTube videos with over a billion views are music videos. And last but not least, music generated the most views per minute of content of any category on the platform, outpacing gaming and vlog videos.

There’s a reason why other video platforms like TikTok and Snap also continue to engage in licensing talks with major labels, no matter how expensive, drawn-out or bureaucratic the process may be. Especially at their level of scale, these platforms need high-quality, popular music catalog (and, arguably, compelling partnerships with music celebrities) to attract and sustain engagement.

2) The music industry has a lot to learn from influencers…

Despite the influence music has on these various video platforms, I think most artists treat video merely as a promotional platform of secondary importance to audio, since royalties from paid streaming services make up the largest chunk of revenue for recorded music (and tend to have friendlier per-stream rates on average).

As a result, regardless of how much behind-the-scenes content artists share, the underlying tone of voice often becomes more transactional rather than relational in nature. There is enormous pressure to direct users elsewhere to a more profitable interaction, with prompts like “stream my music!” or “buy a ticket to a show on my tour!” Influencer campaigns in this paradigm are short-term marketing expenses, rather than long-term income streams.

In contrast, most of the musicians invited to perform and speak at VidCon 2019 have cultivated more active relationships with audiences on-platform, which clearly break down the fourth wall between viewer and creator and provide a wealth of content beyond just singles or albums, compared to the typical major-label artist.

Interestingly, many of these artists also got their start in other areas of entertainment outside of music — e.g. as comedy/beauty vloggers (Tessa Violet, Sophie Michelle, Ceraadi, Timothy DeLaGhetto), dancers (Jordyn Jones) or cover artists (Leroy Sanchez, Next Town Down, Julia Nunes). These kinds of formats naturally lend themselves to publishing a higher volume of content at a faster pace — versus, for instance, pouring several thousand dollars into a few music videos per year that each takes several weeks to film and edit.

A higher publishing cadence puts these artists at an advantage with respect to discovery and getting picked up by a platform’s recommendation algorithms, while also training viewers and subscribers over time to visit said artists’ channels regularly for updates.

Thinking about YouTube specifically: as I wrote previously for this Patreon page and for my newsletter, it seems that most major artists today use YouTube only as an occasional repository for official, high-budget videos that are released just a few times a year, instead of fleshing out their channels more with additional recording, touring and personal footage. This is correlated with the leanback nature of a lot of music consumption on YouTube (whereas it’s comparably more difficult to watch a beauty vlog “passively”).

The artists who consistently get the most engagement on YouTube — including Ariana Grande, Taylor Swift and multiple K-pop groups like BTS and Blackpink — treat themselves like influencers natively on the platform, and have trained their fans to treat their respective channels as a resource for a diverse range of bonus and behind-the-scenes content, updated on a regular basis.

In short, the music industry can learn from the digital-influencer industry in terms of the power of consistency and regularity in publishing content, regardless of whether it’s actually tied to a given record.

I would also add that as record labels dive deeper into the podcast business, they’re also going more into the influencer business. That’s because podcasting economics, for now, runs heavily on brands directly sponsoring individual personalities who publish content on a consistent release schedule — almost the exact same way influencers monetize.

There still seems to be a deep-set stigma in music, especially among independent artists, around the concept of “selling out”; meanwhile, influencers are literally making a living from selling other brands, in addition to their own. Perhaps there is an opportunity here for music companies to learn from influencers when it comes to pulling off brand partnerships that are positive and authentic in the public eye.

3) …and digital influencers have a lot to learn from the music industry.

The two main lessons digital influencers could learn from music revolve around copyright and revenue diversification.

It’s 2019, and many major video influencers still have antagonistic relationships with the music industry over copyright issues. Underlying this antagonism is the perception that money that is otherwise rightfully theirs is continually being siphoned off to greedy labels and publishers, in part through technologies like YouTube’s Content ID.

Video creators like Lindsay Ellis and Jimmy “MrBeast” Donaldson have publicly spoken out against record labels for siphoning off as much as five figures in revenue due to copyright claims. YouTube has implemented some changes like timestamped claims in an attempt to give creators more leverage in disputes, but that doesn’t seem to have minimized the outcry.

The issues extend to subscriptions as well, not just advertising. The now-shuttered Internet Creators Guild (ICG) claims that labels take 70% of every dollar spent by YouTube Premium subscribers, with the other 30% split between YouTube and creators. Even though “creators still make more money from a view from a YouTube Premium subscriber than an ad-supported view … if record labels were not taking such a lion’s share of the revenue, we believe Premium could have been game changing for many creators,” the ICG wrote in an email to its members.

The revenue split on subscriptions could be a serious issue if labels are just siphoning that much money off the top. But I think the frustration and misunderstanding around takedowns and copyright claims could really be handled more diplomatically and, even avoided completely, if influencers and music-industry execs just talked to each other more, especially in person at events like VidCon where the shared mission and objectives are laid bare.

Creators could learn about music distribution and publishing, while the music industry could learn about a day in the life of a YouTuber and how best they can collaborate and help out. This will be increasingly important as more labels sign internet personalities to their rosters as de facto artists (e.g. Poppy and Ceraadi, who are currently signed to Mad Decent and Roc Nation Records, respectively).

Who is at the forefront of closing this gap?

Agencies and management companies like Fanbytes, Muuser, Sweetshop and The Hello Group are working to close the intersection between music and influencers on a systemic level, but still on a project-by-project basis.

Other startups like Thematic and Lickd are tackling the sector from a licensing perspective, enabling influencers to license tracks from artists and labels directly without any fear of getting their content taken down (and, in exchange, artists get a long-term, passive revenue stream from these licenses).

Labels are also gradually jumping on the bandwagon: Warner Music Group has a joint venture for video distribution with Australian influencer network Born Bred Talent, while Monstercat’s Gold program makes a large amount of the indie label’s content available to online gaming and video influencers, claim-free, through an affordable monthly subscription. (The Verge just published a great feature on how Monstercat Gold has changed the label’s relationship with gamers.)

The music and online-influencer communities do have distinct needs and economics, and I’m not asking that music-industry stakeholders comprise a majority of attendees at a place like VidCon — that just wouldn’t make sense. But the fact that they are so absent from these events, when their art plays a significant role in driving up the value of influencers’ favorite platforms, is equally irrational.