The Pros and Cons of Uploading Your Music Video to your Own Channel Vs GRM Daily and co ?

As an independent artiste, your number one goal is to always ensure that your content is in front of as much people as possible. Even though you do what you do because you love it, you also want the world to listen and watch your stuff because you and your “dawgs” think it’s dope.

In this post, I will be taking you though a journey and at the end of the journey, you will know how to properly promote your music video, whether to upload it to YouTube Independently or through a platform like GRM DAILY, the pros and cons of both and I might step on the shoes of some big player because of my “no-filter” approach.

Ready?

Let’s go!

As of the day this post is written, GRM Daily currently has 2.36 Million subscribers on their channel and obviously thousands and thousands of music videos from both independent / up-coming artistes to the “A lists” ones.

As a platform, I commend the work GRM Daily is doing. At the end of the day, they started from the bottom and I’m sure the goal from the beginning was to create a platform where people can find, get to know and watch the newest music videos from the UK scene and bring shine to artistes whether it’s the kid from around the block or the “top boy” who moves weight and raps about it.

As years go by, businesses always somehow and sometime deviate from their original goal and this happens because of expansion, success and cash flow.

As a business person myself, I understand that but at the same time, I also believe that as a business grows and they have more success, they are in a much more better position to be of help than they were when they started.

Okay, let’s start from the beginning. 

How Do You Get Your Music Video on GRM Daily? 

GRM Daily has grown to a point where as an independent artiste in the UK, the first place you want your music video on is GRM Daily.

It’s good for your clout and hype!

Your friends and followers will be hyped that your video is on GRM Daily. To them, your video must have been dope for it to be featured on GRM, they have no clue that you have to pay to get on there and that It’s not really how dope you are, it’s just that money talks.

I remember when I wanted to upload my first video, I thought it was gonna be free. I thought all I had to do was send my video to someone on the team for them to review and if they think it’s up to their standard, they would upload it. That was what I thought from the beginning.

Of course I was wrong, why on earth would I expect them to upload the video for free and give me free promotion and exposure to their millions of subscribers they spent years building? My bad, I was naive.

Being Nigerian, and new to the UK – I didn’t know how to go about it.

I searched on Instagram to see someone who worked on the team and I stumbled upon Posty. I didn’t know who he was but from going through his page, I found out he was the founder. So, I slid in his DM like a lil b*tch.

Of course he didn’t reply me.

He probably gets 100s of messages like these from people and me not having a BLUE TICK on my profile didn’t help either (Shit, I really need to get me that blue tick)

When I saw he didn’t reply after some days, I did what anyone would do and searched on google “how to upload video to GRM Daily” and I saw that all I had to do was email them at submissions@grimedaily.com and that was what I did.

In the email, I said I was asking on behalf of my artiste because I felt they would take my email more serious than if it was the artiste himself, lol (I don’t know why I did that but it just made sense at the time. Oh, also – I have 2 personalities, my Tech side and Music side. So I guess that’s why) 

How Much Does GRM Daily Charge?

So, how much does GRM Daily charge to get your video on their channel?

From the screenshot above, you can see the exact amount they charge as of the February 2019 when they sent that reply.

I’m sure it’s still the same as of the day this post is being written, but be sure to check in with them for updated prices.

GRM Daily charges £300 for your video to be on their channel and they say “at GRM Daily’s submission team discretion” – I really doubt that they are saying No to £300 because I’ve seen some really really wack videos on their channel that looks like it was shot on iPhone 4 in Uganda! (No shade to my Ugandans though lol)

So, there you have it.

For £300, you can have your video on GRM and it can potentially be in from of their 2.36 Million subscribers. Sounds good?

I think it sounds fair and good because if your video is placed in front of 2 Million people and on a platform where over 90% of the people there love music, this should be a win for you because if your video is good, your song can really catch fire and your streams increase and bla bla bla.

Oh and don’t forget that you will be able to brag to your friends that your video was premiered and released on GRM Daily. (maybe even get some groupies with it? who knows)

However, if you look at it from another angle, it’s not all roses and these are the reasons why: 

• Only about 10% or (less) is the percentage of subscribers who will watch a new video from a channel.

Social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram & YouTube do not make money from people watching videos for free, they make money from people who run adverts.

This means that in order for them to encourage pages and channels to spend money with them, they have limited the amount of people who will see their post organically.

So, if a page has 2 Million followers / subscribers, you can bet your ass that only 10% will see or engage with the page’s new posts (except they are looking for it)

That’s why you see channels or pages having high number of subscribers or followers but their post only gets little engagement in comparison to their follower base.

So, even though GRM Daily’s big Unique Selling Point is that they have 2 Million subscribers, have it in mind that it doesn’t mean that your video will be seen by 2 Million people.

By the way, it’s not their fault. They don’t control the algorithms.

• People don’t like “NEW THINGS”

You and I are guilty of this, every-time we pick up our phone, we listen to the same artistes and music we’ve probably listened to a million times, we don’t like to explore and check out new artistes and if we do, it’s only once in a blue moon.

It’s simple, people don’t like change.

So, when GRM Daily uploads a video of an artiste who isn’t a “known artiste”, people are more likely to not pay attention to the video or engage with it because it goes back to our human instincts of “no new friends”, we only want to rock with things and people we already know.

This greatly limits the number of views a new independent artiste’s video will get. Remember that your video in the first place is only being shown to less than 10%?

Well, from those 10%, majority of them are willingly choosing not to watch your video because they don’t know your name.

On some rare occasions, if the thumbnail of your video is Sexual, Shocking, Funny or Click-baity, people might check it out, thereby increasing your chances of getting more views.  (So, if you do plan to release with GRM, make sure y’all agree on a thumbnail that will grab attention. Don’t just use a still image from the video.) 

• Multiple Uploads in a day or even in the same hour. 

Okay this is very important.

Your video is already fighting for a chance to be seen as you are fighting against the YouTube Algorithm shaving you and people not wanting to watch new stuff, now you have to deal with your video being lost in the sauce? (or noise if you will)

GRM Daily uploads between 6 – 10 videos in a day! 

That’s a lot if they really want videos to get reach.

After they upload your video, your next prayer should be that 10 other videos are not uploaded 1 hour later because if they do (which they will), your video will get lost in the noise. After paying £300, shouldn’t your video have an opportunity to see the light of day?

You can answer that yourself.

Remember, it is not their fault once again – they have to get income in and they have to keep the uploads going but is that a Win-Win situation for you? 

Remember there is already a lot of things working against you, now this?

• GRM Premier Vs GRM Daily

If you browse through the GRM Daily YouTube channel, you will see that there is a distinction among the videos.

Some have the GOLD tag “GRM PREMIER” and others have the “GRM DAILY” white tag on the thumbnail.

The videos with the GRM PREMIER gold tags are usually videos from somewhat known artistes while the ones with the white GRM DAILY white tag are from “not so known” artistes.

It’s clear that the videos with Gold thumbnail tag gets significantly more views than the ones with the white tag because the viewers instantly perceive the Gold tagged ones as premium, of higher quality, to be watched or Exclusive even though that is not always true.

They are just tagged as that because they are from artistes that GRM Daily terms as “known” or “blown”  and this segregation influences which videos people on the channel choose to watch and engage with.

People sub-consciously perceive the Gold tagged ones as premium and the white tagged ones as “not so premium”, not knowing that the white tagged ones are from artistes who pay to get their videos on the channel while the ones from the “known” artistes are probably uploaded for free. (Now, don’t quote me on that, I don’t know for a fact if “known” artistes have to pay as well but from common sense, I think GRM will be happy to have the “known” artiste’s video exclusively on their channel and wouldn’t charge them for that. Like I said, don’t quote me on that, I’m just speculating) 

This simple act of “gold tagging” some and “white tagging” others also plays a role in limiting how many people will end up watching your video as an “unknown independent artiste”.

• GRM Does Little or Nothing to Support. 

As you can see from the first 2 points above, most of the things limiting your video from getting a lot of views even though GRM Daily has 2 Million + subscribers are things beyond GRM’s power. However, they can do better.

What do I mean by that?

Well, for £300, your video will be uploaded to their channel, synced to their website and they will post out 1 tweet of the upload on twitter.

Based on the points above, we already know that it will only take the “grace of God” for your video to get more than 100k views as an unknown independent artiste if you rely solely on them.

We also know that people don’t really check websites these days, ain’t nobody checking the GRM website to see new videos, they check the YouTube channel instead, people are more “app based” than “website based these days”.

So, them posting your video on their website doesn’t do much.

Okay, they said they will post 1 tweet of your video link.

Really bruh?

You and I know that twitter is the most noisiest social media platform on earth, things get lost in the noise in less than 1 minute! That tweet holds little to no value to you – in terms of getting eyes to your video. The tweet gets lost in the noise instantly.

So, for £300, you know what you are getting and it aint what you think you are getting.

Does GRM Pay Artistes?

Another very important question is does GRM Daily pay artistes?

The answer is NO! 

They don’t and they do not in anyway talk about monies you can earn from your video being on their platform, getting views and them monetizing your video. (I don’t know the situation between GRM and “known or blown artistes”, I’m talking from a point of view of independent artistes – which is more than 80% of videos on their platform) 

On Average a YouTube channel can receive $18 per 1,000 ad views. This equates to $3 – $5 per 1000 video views.

Using the HypeAuditor tool, we can see some cool stats about the GRM Daily channel.

It’s not up for discussion if GRM Daily makes money from videos on their channel or not, they do make money and it all goes back to the company, nothing to the artistes (directly)

Should artistes who amaze significant amount of views on their video get some type of share of the revenue their video makes? I think it’s only right.

Platforms such as Spotify, Apple Music, Tidal and the likes work on that model.

Even though they own the platform and own the millions of users on it, anytime someone streams and plays your music, you get revenue from that. That’s how it should be, as a creative – other people are allowed to make money from you but you should also be included in the equation. It’s your freaking creation for crying out loud.

It even costs more to shoot a music video that it costs to record an audio! So, you should be getting more revenue from your video views than your audio plays, don’t you think?

When I was writing this post, I did some research and found out that in 2016 – Jammer called out GRM daily and SBTv for ‘not giving to the youth’ a.k.a Making money off creatives but not putting enough back in their pocket.

Yo! That was back in 2016. I’m very sure GRM didn’t have a million subscribers then and they were already seen as a successful brand making money? You can imagine how much they are racking in as of 2019 when creatives are more confident in themselves and shooting video almost every other week.

GRM’s boss Posty replied him back:

What Jammer was trying to say or do was to challenge the status quo and ask the platform to do better and be more innovative in ways that they give back to actual independent artistes who pay them to get on their platform and get little or no return on investment.

I am not going to get into Posty’s reply because from reading it and you reading some of the points listed above, you should be able to make your own judgements and also I don’t want no smoke with Posty or GRM Daily, looooooooooooooooooooool. I’m just creating content, challenging the status quo, pointing out things no one wants to talk about and attempting to create a narrative where independent artistes who pay money get their money’s worth and get some type of Return on Investment.

How Can GRM Daily Do Better?

To fully round up the post, both as a business man and an independent artiste, I believe I can give one or two points as to how GRM Daily can do better and help independent artistes who pay them get more exposure and ultimately some type of return on their investment.

•  Do More To Promote Independent Artistes.

We all can agree by now that just posting a video on their channel isn’t going to give that video all the exposure it deserves.

Remember the points made earlier in the post?

I believe GRM can do more than just a tweet! Most of their audience are more Instagram people than twitter people, I think if GRM really want’s to add value to independent artistes who pay them, they should also post in on their Instagram as that will give the video more exposure.

Now, If you check their Instagram page, it’s only video posts from “known” artistes or people who already have some type of “clout”, what about others who are actually dope but have no clout yet?

Okay, maybe posting on their Instagram feed is asking too much? I believe posting on their story with a swipe up link to the video as an alternative will greatly increase the exposure of the new uploads.

The Instagram story post only stays there for 24 hours anyways, so in 24 hours time, it’s gone!

I think they can do better by including this as a way to drive more traffic and eyes to new uploads.

• Remove the obvious “segregation thumbnail”

The gold tag “GRM PREMIER” thumbnail on videos will always make the white ones tagged as “GRM DAILY” seem less important and this makes people sub-consciously choose not to engage with them and by this happening – artistes are not getting their monies worth because that’s one more thing against them.

Just take a look at the screenshot below yourself, the gold tagged ones stand out more and thus have significantly more views than the white tagged ones because they are seen as “premium” even though most of the white tagged ones from “unknown” artistes are as good or even better.

A good example of how to do this would be to take a look at WorldStar hiphop’s style below: 

As you can see, all the videos look the same, there’s nothing screaming “THIS IS BETTER, WATCH THIS”, they are all tagged with the Worldstar logo accordingly. This way, everyone has an equal fair chance.

Up and coming independent artistes already have a lot of things fighting against them, we shouldn’t be adding more to it.

• Include artiste’s music link in their video description.

Okay, now that an artiste has paid to have their video uploaded and know that they won’t make a dime from the money GRM Daily makes from the video, can GRM be kind enough to at least include the link for people to stream their music so they can get some pennies in their pocket?

In the video description of videos uploaded to GRM, all they do is continue to plug themselves and forget about plugging the people who make GRM – GRM in the first place.

We have to remember that GRM is only GRM because of videos on their channel. Their whole business model is around artiste’s creativity.

If they can include the link to stream, listen and download the song whose video is uploaded, that will significantly help the artiste because people can click and stream, listen, add to playlist or even download their records and anytime people do that, some revenue is made by the artiste.

If only 10% of people click the link in the description and a video gets 10k views (which is the average amount of views a video gets on GRM) that’s 1000 new people who will have streamed the song and that brings in some revenue to the artiste.

Advice to Independent Artistes (Should you use GRM Daily?) 

I think the answer is “it’s up to you”. 

You will have to make up your own mind on this one, or maybe some points below might help you make your mind some more.

So, the video I uploaded on GRM Daily is my debut single “Eko to London” which was created off of my video that went viral.

Remember that video of a black guy dancing with a white girl at the Notting Hill Carnival and she ran away when she heard he was Nigerian?

Well, I am that guy and we made a dope ass song and video to change the narrative about Nigerians.

The video was uploaded on GRM on March 9 2019. Watch below.

KEY POINTS:

The video currently has 52,000 views on GRM Daily as of today.

Mind you, the 52k views is not solely from GRM’s subscribers.

Remember, I’m also a digital marketer, so, I ran some Facebook and Instagram paid ads to bring views to the video. I reckon I brought about 30k views including my own people coming from my social media channels and my friends, friends of friends and what have you.

If no pushing was done on my side, the video will have just about 20k views or less.

I stopped running ads to it but will continue at a later date when I have a much stronger strategy to incentivize people with.

After being dissapointed with how the video did considering the fact it was posted on GRM daily with over 2 Million subscribers, the song being a good song and the video being a very good video with meme worthy parts, I instantly knew that GRM wasn’t worth it.

It was just hype and it would be stupid for me to pay them again to upload my next video. (this is the business man in me speaking)

So, for the new song I dropped 2 weeks ago. I knew I would upload it on my channel, so by doing this – I will grow my subscriber-base, have full control over the video tags, tittle, description of the video itself, thumbnail and much more. This is what being an independent artiste should be about. No middle men, if they can be cut off.

I also knew that instead of paying them £300, I will use that £300 to run paid promotions and I was certain that with my skillset, I can start racking in views in no time.

The video for my new single JJC. Watch below:

KEY POINTS:

The video is currently on 41,000 views as of October 22. It was released Oct 5.

I have not been very aggressive with the Ads as I should and this is because of a lot of projects I’m working on. (I’m not only an artiste, I’m a tech guy and content creator)

I have spent just about £35 on Youtube Ads so far. Actually to be honest, I’ve spent about £135 but £100 is free from YouTube Ads.

YouTube will give you a welcome £100 for Free if you spend £25 on video ads but you can only do so if you are running ads to video you own and on your channel!

So, in total – money out of my pocket has only been £35  and we already have close to 50k views in 2 weeks as opposed to 7 months on GRM? Imagine when I pay more attention to the campaign and spend more money? My goal is to get to 100k views before the end of the month.

Get your own £100 or $100 coupon code from https://www.youtube.com/ads/

So, yes – posting it on my channel is way more profitable and brings me return on investment on the long run – I get to own the video fully as it’s on MY channel, I get to build subscribers, and I get to keep 100% of revenue my channel makes from Ads displayed.

Its a WIN WIN!

The artiste in me tried to convince me to pay to post on GRM Daily because of the “perceived clout” but the business man in always wins because it’s not about clout, it’s about numbers and digits.

If the outcome isn’t income, it gets scrapped.

If you notice, a lot of UK and other artistes are now uploading their videos to their own channels. We can argue that they can do so because they’ve built their name and have the following, yes that’s true but it also shows that people are beginning to wake up to the fact that middlemen need to be cut wherever necessary in order to maximize the profits of the artiste.

In Conclusion.

I hope this post has been somewhat insightful, helpful or added value in some way.

My intention of writing this post is not to bash anyone, it is simply to create content that asks questions, challenges the status quo and attempts to create a better narrative for creatives.

I think with those 3 points above on how GRM Daily can do better, GRM can really improve their service and artistes can get some type of ROI on their monies spent on shooting their video and paying them to post it on their platform.

Also, artistes can decide for themselves if they want to upload on their own channel or use third party platforms like GRM Daily.

If you have any question, please drop a comment below and I will be there to answer you.

Is there something you would love me to expand on? Drop a comment as well.