Free Music Unlocked: The Ultimate Library for Videographers

15 Best Sites to Find & Download Royalty-Free Music for YouTube

Richard Bennett

Oct 26, 2023• Proven solutions

0

Choosing great royalty-free music for your YouTube videos will help put your audience in the right frame of mind, cover up flaws in your background audio, and help viewers feel more engaged with your content.

YouTube provides a free audio library, but since a lot of creators use it everyone’s videos can start to sound the same. Here are 15 alternative places where you can get royalty-free music for free! It’ll say at the beginning of every section whether they require attribution or allow commercial use.

Best Sites for Royalty-Free Music for YouTube Creators [Free Download]

If you are using Wondershare Filmora video editor , you will find there are some royalty-free music tracks and sound effects already pre-programmed in the Audio library. You will find different styles of music tacks, varying from Young & Bright to Electronic. Download Filmora, and you will get the royalty-free audio library and powerful video editing tools.

1. Audionautix

Commercial Use? Allowed.

Attribution Required? Yes. You must credit the site with ‘music by audionautix.com’ if you want to use this music (if you have a website, they ask that you include a link back to them).

Paid Options? No. All of the music on this site is free.

One of the first things you’ll see when you arrive on Audiionautix is a ‘YouTube Friendly’ button. They know that most people browsing their music library are looking for songs for YouTube videos, and that want you to know their music is safe from copyright claims.

All of the music in the Audionautix collection was created by one man, Jason Shaw, but there’s still a huge variety of tracks.

On the front page of Audionautix, there are three selections you can make to start your music search – genre, mood, and tempo. Genres range from hard rock to bluegrass to techno (there are 28 genres in total), and the moods include things like ‘uplifting’, ‘evil’, and ‘bouncy’ (there are 37 of those). The tempos are fast, medium, and slow. So, if you want a medium-tempo acoustic song with a calming mood, you can easily find all of the songs that meet those qualifications.

Not every combination will deliver results, so it can be easier to just choose two of the three search parameters.

2. Bensound

Commercial Use? Allowed.

Attribution Required? Yes. You must include one of the following in your video description: “Music: https://www.bensound.com/royalty-free-music” or “Music: Song title - Bensound.com”

Paid Options? Yes. If you don’t want to credit Bensound (or can’t for some reason) then you need to purchase a license. Licensing starts at about $28 USD (price listed as €24) per track.

The most popular music from Bensound is displayed on the first page. Beyond the titles of the tracks, each has a short description that will give you a good idea of what to expect from the song before you listen. You’ll need to listen to a song to know if you want it, but the descriptions are a fast way to figure out if you don’t want something. For example, ‘A New Beginning’ could be anything based on that title, but the description lets you know it’s ‘punk rock’ with an ‘epic/achievement’ feeling.

You can narrow down the music you are shown by choosing a genre from the menu near the top of your page (there are 8 genres including cinematic, electronica, and corporate/pop). There’s also a search bar, and you can choose whether to display popular or new songs first.

All of the music on Bensound was created by Benjamin TISSOT, a composer based in France. He has been creating music for over 10 years.

3. dig.ccMixter

Commercial Use? Depends. Some songs are available for commercial use, some are not. It is easy to search only for songs which are.

Attribution Required? Yes. You must credit the musicians.

Paid Options? Yes. You can purchase licenses to get around commercial use or attribution restrictions. Personal licenses are $22 USD.

Musicians upload their work to ccMixter and make it available to creators like you at dig.ccMixter. Over 45,000 musicians have participated and this has resulted in a huge variety of music for you to discover.

Clicking ‘tag search’ at the top of the page is probably the best way to start your search. The ‘tags’ are displayed in three categories – genre, instrument, and style. You can click as many tags as you want from each category (i.e. you can check off ‘classical’ for the genre and then both bass and cello for instruments).

By default, your search will return results that have even just one of the tags you selected, but you can click ‘match all’ to see results that include all of your selected tags.

To the right of the screen, there’s a button called ‘filters’ and if you click it it’ll let you narrow your results by license (you can choose to only browse music that is free for commercial use). You can also specify if you only want instrumental songs.

If you do not use the ‘free for commercial use’ filter then you will need to click on songs to see whether their creative commons licenses allow commercial use.

If you’re an indie game developer, they have a Music for Video Games section for you too.

4. Free Music Archive

Commercial Use? Depends on the song.

Attribution Required? Depends on the song.

Paid Options? No. Everything is free.

There is a huge selection on Free Music Archive (they include songs curated by other sites, including other sites on this list), but using this site can be a bit trickier than using other sites because there are so many different licenses at play. There are even several licenses that do not allow songs to be used in YouTube videos (any Creative Commons license with ‘ND / No Derivatives’ will not allow for use in a video). You should read this page before downloading anything from the Free Music Archive to use on YouTube.

To start browsing Free Music Archive for music you can use for your videos, go to ‘Curators’ in the top menu, and select ‘Music for Video’. There’s no point in browsing music you might not be allowed to use for YouTube, and so the site has made it easy to find the music you can.

By default this screen will not include music you can use commercially, so you need to check ‘allows for commercial use’ in the side menu if that’s important to you. You can also select a genre and specify if you only want instrumental songs.

5. Free Stock Music

Commercial Use? Allowed.

Attribution Required? No.

Paid Options? No. Everything is free.

Simply choose a genre from the ‘Free Music’ drop-down menu to start browsing Free Stock Music’s collection. There are 10 genres including Pop, Hip Hop, and Corporate.

There are not a lot of ways to customize your search results on this site. You just can search for a keyword, like ‘happy’, but you can’t narrow your results down by things like instrument or mood like you can on some other sites. You just have to scroll through either your search results or the chosen genre until you find something.

To make it a bit easier, Free Stock Music has included detailed descriptions of each song you can read while your browsing and these descriptions do tend to include details about instruments and the moods of the songs.

You need to create a free account on Free Stock Music to access their songs.

6. Incompetech

Commercial Use? YouTube monetization allowed. Other kinds of commercial use may be restricted.

Attribution Required? Yes. You can put the attribution in your video description.

Paid Options? Yes. If you cannot (or do not want to) credit Incompetech then you can purchase a license instead. Licensing 1 piece of music costs $30.

Incompetech allows you to browse one of three ways. The ‘Full Search’ will be best for most people, but if you want to see every song in alphabetical order you can click on ‘Full List’, or you can browse collections like ‘Comedic’ in ‘View Collections’ (but not every piece of music on the site can be found in a collection).

If you go into ‘Full Search’ you’ll see a list of all the music and be able to filter it by feel, tempo, genre, and length. For example, you could set ‘Feels’ to ‘Grooving’ or ‘Length’ to ‘3:00-3:29’.

You can also use the search bar to look for an instrument or song title.

Clicking Expand All will reveal descriptions of all the songs and a ‘listen now’ button, but it will stretch the page a lot. You can see more details about individual songs, and listen to them, by clicking on the title. You won’t be taken to a new page, which is convenient.

You can also download all the music at once (by clicking ‘download all the music on this site at once’).

7. Josh Woodward

Commercial Use? Allowed.

Attribution Required? Yes. Attribution goes in your description box and it should look like this: Music - “SONG TITLE HERE” by Josh Woodward. Free download: http://joshwoodward.com/

Paid Options? Yes. If you cannot give Josh credit for some reason you can buy a single-song license for $30.

Josh Woodward is a singer-songwriter who has chosen to allow the free use of all his music (although he does appreciate donations).

You’ll immediately see a list of music on Josh’s site (not everything, there are over 200 songs on this site), and you can change what is displayed by using the filters on the right of the page. The filters available are Playlist, Genre, Album, Tags, Tempo, and Length.

The playlists are songs that have been bundled together around a theme like ‘fun and fast’ or ‘popular in videos’.

There are nine genres to choose from including ‘dark acoustic’ and ‘Americana’.

The albums are albums that Josh has released.

You can also search the song titles and lyrics by typing keywords into the search bar.

At the top of the page, there’s a player you can use to preview the songs, and you can choose whether to browse vocal songs or songs with lyrics (the results below may not appear to change, but if you use the player you’ll hear the instrumental version instead of the version with vocals).

8. Looperman

Commercial Use? Allowed for loops, but they make no guarantees.

Attribution Required? Unclear. The site doesn’t address attribution so it may be up to whoever has uploaded the loop you want to use.

Paid Options? No.

Looperman is a community for musicians. The goal is to provide instrumental loops and acapella vocals to other musicians for their own projects. In theory, all of the music loops and sounds are completely free to use in your projects, but since it’s a community they cannot guarantee that a user hasn’t uploaded something they don’t own (they aren’t allowed to, so in theory you should be safe, but the site doesn’t make any guarantees).

If you want to use vocals it seems like you have to talk to the person who owns the vocals about whether you can use them commercially or whether you need to include attribution.

9. Moby Gratis

Commercial Use? Never allowed. You cannot make money from the project you use this music in any way, including YouTube monetization or through a service like Patreon.

Attribution Required? Yes. Put this in your video description: Music: [Track Name] by Moby courtesy of Mobygratis.com

Paid Options? No.

Moby is a Grammy-nominated, VMA-winning, artist whose work you have probably heard on the radio. Even if you aren’t familiar with Moby himself, he has co-written, produced, and remixed music for other major artists like David Bowie, Guns N’ Roses, and Daft Punk.

Moby has chosen to make a catalog of his work available to independent filmmakers for non-commercial projects. Not all of the music provided on the site is available for YouTube, only the music marked Unreleased (if it has been released, then it will be flagged by YouTube’s copyright system). There is a lot of music under the ‘Unreleased’ category, though.

In order to download songs, you will need to make an account, and it takes about 24 hours for your account to be approved.

10. Musopen

Commercial Use? Depends on the song.

Attribution Required? Depends on the song

Paid Options? No.

Musopen provides music that is either in the ‘public domain’, or protected by Creative Commons licenses. If it’s in the public domain that means that nobody owns the copyright and anyone can use it for anything (however, Musopen does warn that they do not review uploads from their users so it is possible that someone could upload something they claim is public domain and be lying or wrong).

Creative Commons licenses all have their own conditions. Some may block commercial use, some may require attribution. The ones you need to watch out for as a video creator are the ones marked ‘No Derivatives’, because you can’t use songs licensed this way in videos.

You can start using Musopen by typing a keyword into the search bar on the main page, or scrolling down to select ‘Browse royalty free music recordings’. Besides music recordings, Musopen provides sheet music. If you have some musical talent and want to record your own music for your videos then this might be useful. If not, you probably want to stick to the recordings.

If you click on the Music Discovery Tool you’ll be able to search the recordings not only by instrument, but by license (so you can make sure you’re only looking at music that is in the public domain, or make sure you’re not looking at anything with that ‘No Derivatives’ condition.

11. TeknoAXE

Commercial Use? Allowed.

Attribution Required? Yes.

Paid Options? No.

All of the music on TeknoAXE is covered under a CC4.0 license, which means you can share and adapt the music for any purpose so long as you provide attribution.

TeknoAXE’s music is divided into four categories: electronic dance music, rock and metal music, orchestra and soundtrack, and miscellaneous. There are several sub-categories under every category.

Once you’ve clicked into subcategory you’ll see thumbnails for every song in the category. Click on one to be taken to the song’s page, where you can listen to it before you decide if you want to download.

There are tons of places where you can find great royalty-free music you can use on YouTube, so start hunting! Finding the perfect song for that cool montage you’ve got planned, your intro sequence, or the background of your vlog will take your content to a new level of quality.

12. PacDV

Commercial Use? Allowed.

Attribution Required? Yes. Music by <www.pacdv.com/sounds/>

Paid Options? No.

PacDV is primarily a sound effects site, but they have a music section as well (just click Music in the menu to the left under Sound Effects. ‘Free Music’ under resources is a completely different site). There is no way to filter down the music, and there is no search function.

There is a column in the list of music for ‘moods/emotions’, so you can get an idea of which songs you might want to listen to before you click to their pages.

13. Partners In Rhyme

Commercial Use? Allowed.

Attribution Required? Yes. Credit them in your video description.

Paid Options? Yes. You can’t buy a license for free songs to get around attribution, but they do offer paid music. At $100 or more per song, their paid music is outside the budget of most YouTubers.

Partners In Rhyme is mostly a paid site, and they’re at the pricier end of the spectrum for paid sites. The reason they’re included on this list is that they have kindly curated a selection of free music for use on YouTube or in projects like podcasts (the link above will take you to the free page, not the site in general).

There isn’t a search function for the free music, or a way to narrow down what’s displayed, but you can click the play button next to any title to hear what the song sounds like. To download, just right click and choose ‘save file’ or ‘save target as’.

14. Purple Planet Music

Commercial Use? Allowed.

Attribution Required? Yes. Put ‘Music: http://www.purple-planet.com’ in your video description.

Paid Options? Yes. If you want to use the music for anything besides YouTube, or if you don’t want to give them credit, then you can buy a license for $5.

Purple Planet Music is a team of three people, two of whom compose, perform, record, and produce all of the music you’ll find on this site (the third is the studio manager).

From the home page of Purple Planet choose one of the categories listed under ‘Royalty Free Music’. The categories are more related to moods than genres and include things like ‘cute’, ‘sneaky’, and ‘reflective’. Because they know you may want to use this music in film projects, you can even find categories like ‘dark backgrounds’.

Once you click into a category everything is listed, you can’t narrow your results. There’s not an overwhelming number of songs in each category, though, so it’s easy to choose something just by reading descriptions and listening to what’s there.

15. Sounds Crate

Commercial Use? Allowed.

Attribution Required? No.

Paid Options? Yes. You can upgrade to a Pro account for $49 per year to access more content.

Sounds Crate has music and sound effects. After you click into music, you’ll see thumbnails for sections related to a number of themes such as action music, corporate music, and hip hop. You’ll be able to preview and download all the songs in the category once you’re on the category page.

You are only allowed 5 downloads per day while you’re using Sounds Crate for free. They also request a $10 annual donation from free users, but it’s optional.

Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett is a writer and a lover of all things video.

Follow @Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett

Oct 26, 2023• Proven solutions

0

Choosing great royalty-free music for your YouTube videos will help put your audience in the right frame of mind, cover up flaws in your background audio, and help viewers feel more engaged with your content.

YouTube provides a free audio library, but since a lot of creators use it everyone’s videos can start to sound the same. Here are 15 alternative places where you can get royalty-free music for free! It’ll say at the beginning of every section whether they require attribution or allow commercial use.

Best Sites for Royalty-Free Music for YouTube Creators [Free Download]

If you are using Wondershare Filmora video editor , you will find there are some royalty-free music tracks and sound effects already pre-programmed in the Audio library. You will find different styles of music tacks, varying from Young & Bright to Electronic. Download Filmora, and you will get the royalty-free audio library and powerful video editing tools.

1. Audionautix

Commercial Use? Allowed.

Attribution Required? Yes. You must credit the site with ‘music by audionautix.com’ if you want to use this music (if you have a website, they ask that you include a link back to them).

Paid Options? No. All of the music on this site is free.

One of the first things you’ll see when you arrive on Audiionautix is a ‘YouTube Friendly’ button. They know that most people browsing their music library are looking for songs for YouTube videos, and that want you to know their music is safe from copyright claims.

All of the music in the Audionautix collection was created by one man, Jason Shaw, but there’s still a huge variety of tracks.

On the front page of Audionautix, there are three selections you can make to start your music search – genre, mood, and tempo. Genres range from hard rock to bluegrass to techno (there are 28 genres in total), and the moods include things like ‘uplifting’, ‘evil’, and ‘bouncy’ (there are 37 of those). The tempos are fast, medium, and slow. So, if you want a medium-tempo acoustic song with a calming mood, you can easily find all of the songs that meet those qualifications.

Not every combination will deliver results, so it can be easier to just choose two of the three search parameters.

2. Bensound

Commercial Use? Allowed.

Attribution Required? Yes. You must include one of the following in your video description: “Music: https://www.bensound.com/royalty-free-music” or “Music: Song title - Bensound.com”

Paid Options? Yes. If you don’t want to credit Bensound (or can’t for some reason) then you need to purchase a license. Licensing starts at about $28 USD (price listed as €24) per track.

The most popular music from Bensound is displayed on the first page. Beyond the titles of the tracks, each has a short description that will give you a good idea of what to expect from the song before you listen. You’ll need to listen to a song to know if you want it, but the descriptions are a fast way to figure out if you don’t want something. For example, ‘A New Beginning’ could be anything based on that title, but the description lets you know it’s ‘punk rock’ with an ‘epic/achievement’ feeling.

You can narrow down the music you are shown by choosing a genre from the menu near the top of your page (there are 8 genres including cinematic, electronica, and corporate/pop). There’s also a search bar, and you can choose whether to display popular or new songs first.

All of the music on Bensound was created by Benjamin TISSOT, a composer based in France. He has been creating music for over 10 years.

3. dig.ccMixter

Commercial Use? Depends. Some songs are available for commercial use, some are not. It is easy to search only for songs which are.

Attribution Required? Yes. You must credit the musicians.

Paid Options? Yes. You can purchase licenses to get around commercial use or attribution restrictions. Personal licenses are $22 USD.

Musicians upload their work to ccMixter and make it available to creators like you at dig.ccMixter. Over 45,000 musicians have participated and this has resulted in a huge variety of music for you to discover.

Clicking ‘tag search’ at the top of the page is probably the best way to start your search. The ‘tags’ are displayed in three categories – genre, instrument, and style. You can click as many tags as you want from each category (i.e. you can check off ‘classical’ for the genre and then both bass and cello for instruments).

By default, your search will return results that have even just one of the tags you selected, but you can click ‘match all’ to see results that include all of your selected tags.

To the right of the screen, there’s a button called ‘filters’ and if you click it it’ll let you narrow your results by license (you can choose to only browse music that is free for commercial use). You can also specify if you only want instrumental songs.

If you do not use the ‘free for commercial use’ filter then you will need to click on songs to see whether their creative commons licenses allow commercial use.

If you’re an indie game developer, they have a Music for Video Games section for you too.

4. Free Music Archive

Commercial Use? Depends on the song.

Attribution Required? Depends on the song.

Paid Options? No. Everything is free.

There is a huge selection on Free Music Archive (they include songs curated by other sites, including other sites on this list), but using this site can be a bit trickier than using other sites because there are so many different licenses at play. There are even several licenses that do not allow songs to be used in YouTube videos (any Creative Commons license with ‘ND / No Derivatives’ will not allow for use in a video). You should read this page before downloading anything from the Free Music Archive to use on YouTube.

To start browsing Free Music Archive for music you can use for your videos, go to ‘Curators’ in the top menu, and select ‘Music for Video’. There’s no point in browsing music you might not be allowed to use for YouTube, and so the site has made it easy to find the music you can.

By default this screen will not include music you can use commercially, so you need to check ‘allows for commercial use’ in the side menu if that’s important to you. You can also select a genre and specify if you only want instrumental songs.

5. Free Stock Music

Commercial Use? Allowed.

Attribution Required? No.

Paid Options? No. Everything is free.

Simply choose a genre from the ‘Free Music’ drop-down menu to start browsing Free Stock Music’s collection. There are 10 genres including Pop, Hip Hop, and Corporate.

There are not a lot of ways to customize your search results on this site. You just can search for a keyword, like ‘happy’, but you can’t narrow your results down by things like instrument or mood like you can on some other sites. You just have to scroll through either your search results or the chosen genre until you find something.

To make it a bit easier, Free Stock Music has included detailed descriptions of each song you can read while your browsing and these descriptions do tend to include details about instruments and the moods of the songs.

You need to create a free account on Free Stock Music to access their songs.

6. Incompetech

Commercial Use? YouTube monetization allowed. Other kinds of commercial use may be restricted.

Attribution Required? Yes. You can put the attribution in your video description.

Paid Options? Yes. If you cannot (or do not want to) credit Incompetech then you can purchase a license instead. Licensing 1 piece of music costs $30.

Incompetech allows you to browse one of three ways. The ‘Full Search’ will be best for most people, but if you want to see every song in alphabetical order you can click on ‘Full List’, or you can browse collections like ‘Comedic’ in ‘View Collections’ (but not every piece of music on the site can be found in a collection).

If you go into ‘Full Search’ you’ll see a list of all the music and be able to filter it by feel, tempo, genre, and length. For example, you could set ‘Feels’ to ‘Grooving’ or ‘Length’ to ‘3:00-3:29’.

You can also use the search bar to look for an instrument or song title.

Clicking Expand All will reveal descriptions of all the songs and a ‘listen now’ button, but it will stretch the page a lot. You can see more details about individual songs, and listen to them, by clicking on the title. You won’t be taken to a new page, which is convenient.

You can also download all the music at once (by clicking ‘download all the music on this site at once’).

7. Josh Woodward

Commercial Use? Allowed.

Attribution Required? Yes. Attribution goes in your description box and it should look like this: Music - “SONG TITLE HERE” by Josh Woodward. Free download: http://joshwoodward.com/

Paid Options? Yes. If you cannot give Josh credit for some reason you can buy a single-song license for $30.

Josh Woodward is a singer-songwriter who has chosen to allow the free use of all his music (although he does appreciate donations).

You’ll immediately see a list of music on Josh’s site (not everything, there are over 200 songs on this site), and you can change what is displayed by using the filters on the right of the page. The filters available are Playlist, Genre, Album, Tags, Tempo, and Length.

The playlists are songs that have been bundled together around a theme like ‘fun and fast’ or ‘popular in videos’.

There are nine genres to choose from including ‘dark acoustic’ and ‘Americana’.

The albums are albums that Josh has released.

You can also search the song titles and lyrics by typing keywords into the search bar.

At the top of the page, there’s a player you can use to preview the songs, and you can choose whether to browse vocal songs or songs with lyrics (the results below may not appear to change, but if you use the player you’ll hear the instrumental version instead of the version with vocals).

8. Looperman

Commercial Use? Allowed for loops, but they make no guarantees.

Attribution Required? Unclear. The site doesn’t address attribution so it may be up to whoever has uploaded the loop you want to use.

Paid Options? No.

Looperman is a community for musicians. The goal is to provide instrumental loops and acapella vocals to other musicians for their own projects. In theory, all of the music loops and sounds are completely free to use in your projects, but since it’s a community they cannot guarantee that a user hasn’t uploaded something they don’t own (they aren’t allowed to, so in theory you should be safe, but the site doesn’t make any guarantees).

If you want to use vocals it seems like you have to talk to the person who owns the vocals about whether you can use them commercially or whether you need to include attribution.

9. Moby Gratis

Commercial Use? Never allowed. You cannot make money from the project you use this music in any way, including YouTube monetization or through a service like Patreon.

Attribution Required? Yes. Put this in your video description: Music: [Track Name] by Moby courtesy of Mobygratis.com

Paid Options? No.

Moby is a Grammy-nominated, VMA-winning, artist whose work you have probably heard on the radio. Even if you aren’t familiar with Moby himself, he has co-written, produced, and remixed music for other major artists like David Bowie, Guns N’ Roses, and Daft Punk.

Moby has chosen to make a catalog of his work available to independent filmmakers for non-commercial projects. Not all of the music provided on the site is available for YouTube, only the music marked Unreleased (if it has been released, then it will be flagged by YouTube’s copyright system). There is a lot of music under the ‘Unreleased’ category, though.

In order to download songs, you will need to make an account, and it takes about 24 hours for your account to be approved.

10. Musopen

Commercial Use? Depends on the song.

Attribution Required? Depends on the song

Paid Options? No.

Musopen provides music that is either in the ‘public domain’, or protected by Creative Commons licenses. If it’s in the public domain that means that nobody owns the copyright and anyone can use it for anything (however, Musopen does warn that they do not review uploads from their users so it is possible that someone could upload something they claim is public domain and be lying or wrong).

Creative Commons licenses all have their own conditions. Some may block commercial use, some may require attribution. The ones you need to watch out for as a video creator are the ones marked ‘No Derivatives’, because you can’t use songs licensed this way in videos.

You can start using Musopen by typing a keyword into the search bar on the main page, or scrolling down to select ‘Browse royalty free music recordings’. Besides music recordings, Musopen provides sheet music. If you have some musical talent and want to record your own music for your videos then this might be useful. If not, you probably want to stick to the recordings.

If you click on the Music Discovery Tool you’ll be able to search the recordings not only by instrument, but by license (so you can make sure you’re only looking at music that is in the public domain, or make sure you’re not looking at anything with that ‘No Derivatives’ condition.

11. TeknoAXE

Commercial Use? Allowed.

Attribution Required? Yes.

Paid Options? No.

All of the music on TeknoAXE is covered under a CC4.0 license, which means you can share and adapt the music for any purpose so long as you provide attribution.

TeknoAXE’s music is divided into four categories: electronic dance music, rock and metal music, orchestra and soundtrack, and miscellaneous. There are several sub-categories under every category.

Once you’ve clicked into subcategory you’ll see thumbnails for every song in the category. Click on one to be taken to the song’s page, where you can listen to it before you decide if you want to download.

There are tons of places where you can find great royalty-free music you can use on YouTube, so start hunting! Finding the perfect song for that cool montage you’ve got planned, your intro sequence, or the background of your vlog will take your content to a new level of quality.

12. PacDV

Commercial Use? Allowed.

Attribution Required? Yes. Music by <www.pacdv.com/sounds/>

Paid Options? No.

PacDV is primarily a sound effects site, but they have a music section as well (just click Music in the menu to the left under Sound Effects. ‘Free Music’ under resources is a completely different site). There is no way to filter down the music, and there is no search function.

There is a column in the list of music for ‘moods/emotions’, so you can get an idea of which songs you might want to listen to before you click to their pages.

13. Partners In Rhyme

Commercial Use? Allowed.

Attribution Required? Yes. Credit them in your video description.

Paid Options? Yes. You can’t buy a license for free songs to get around attribution, but they do offer paid music. At $100 or more per song, their paid music is outside the budget of most YouTubers.

Partners In Rhyme is mostly a paid site, and they’re at the pricier end of the spectrum for paid sites. The reason they’re included on this list is that they have kindly curated a selection of free music for use on YouTube or in projects like podcasts (the link above will take you to the free page, not the site in general).

There isn’t a search function for the free music, or a way to narrow down what’s displayed, but you can click the play button next to any title to hear what the song sounds like. To download, just right click and choose ‘save file’ or ‘save target as’.

14. Purple Planet Music

Commercial Use? Allowed.

Attribution Required? Yes. Put ‘Music: http://www.purple-planet.com’ in your video description.

Paid Options? Yes. If you want to use the music for anything besides YouTube, or if you don’t want to give them credit, then you can buy a license for $5.

Purple Planet Music is a team of three people, two of whom compose, perform, record, and produce all of the music you’ll find on this site (the third is the studio manager).

From the home page of Purple Planet choose one of the categories listed under ‘Royalty Free Music’. The categories are more related to moods than genres and include things like ‘cute’, ‘sneaky’, and ‘reflective’. Because they know you may want to use this music in film projects, you can even find categories like ‘dark backgrounds’.

Once you click into a category everything is listed, you can’t narrow your results. There’s not an overwhelming number of songs in each category, though, so it’s easy to choose something just by reading descriptions and listening to what’s there.

15. Sounds Crate

Commercial Use? Allowed.

Attribution Required? No.

Paid Options? Yes. You can upgrade to a Pro account for $49 per year to access more content.

Sounds Crate has music and sound effects. After you click into music, you’ll see thumbnails for sections related to a number of themes such as action music, corporate music, and hip hop. You’ll be able to preview and download all the songs in the category once you’re on the category page.

You are only allowed 5 downloads per day while you’re using Sounds Crate for free. They also request a $10 annual donation from free users, but it’s optional.

Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett is a writer and a lover of all things video.

Follow @Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett

Oct 26, 2023• Proven solutions

0

Choosing great royalty-free music for your YouTube videos will help put your audience in the right frame of mind, cover up flaws in your background audio, and help viewers feel more engaged with your content.

YouTube provides a free audio library, but since a lot of creators use it everyone’s videos can start to sound the same. Here are 15 alternative places where you can get royalty-free music for free! It’ll say at the beginning of every section whether they require attribution or allow commercial use.

Best Sites for Royalty-Free Music for YouTube Creators [Free Download]

If you are using Wondershare Filmora video editor , you will find there are some royalty-free music tracks and sound effects already pre-programmed in the Audio library. You will find different styles of music tacks, varying from Young & Bright to Electronic. Download Filmora, and you will get the royalty-free audio library and powerful video editing tools.

1. Audionautix

Commercial Use? Allowed.

Attribution Required? Yes. You must credit the site with ‘music by audionautix.com’ if you want to use this music (if you have a website, they ask that you include a link back to them).

Paid Options? No. All of the music on this site is free.

One of the first things you’ll see when you arrive on Audiionautix is a ‘YouTube Friendly’ button. They know that most people browsing their music library are looking for songs for YouTube videos, and that want you to know their music is safe from copyright claims.

All of the music in the Audionautix collection was created by one man, Jason Shaw, but there’s still a huge variety of tracks.

On the front page of Audionautix, there are three selections you can make to start your music search – genre, mood, and tempo. Genres range from hard rock to bluegrass to techno (there are 28 genres in total), and the moods include things like ‘uplifting’, ‘evil’, and ‘bouncy’ (there are 37 of those). The tempos are fast, medium, and slow. So, if you want a medium-tempo acoustic song with a calming mood, you can easily find all of the songs that meet those qualifications.

Not every combination will deliver results, so it can be easier to just choose two of the three search parameters.

2. Bensound

Commercial Use? Allowed.

Attribution Required? Yes. You must include one of the following in your video description: “Music: https://www.bensound.com/royalty-free-music” or “Music: Song title - Bensound.com”

Paid Options? Yes. If you don’t want to credit Bensound (or can’t for some reason) then you need to purchase a license. Licensing starts at about $28 USD (price listed as €24) per track.

The most popular music from Bensound is displayed on the first page. Beyond the titles of the tracks, each has a short description that will give you a good idea of what to expect from the song before you listen. You’ll need to listen to a song to know if you want it, but the descriptions are a fast way to figure out if you don’t want something. For example, ‘A New Beginning’ could be anything based on that title, but the description lets you know it’s ‘punk rock’ with an ‘epic/achievement’ feeling.

You can narrow down the music you are shown by choosing a genre from the menu near the top of your page (there are 8 genres including cinematic, electronica, and corporate/pop). There’s also a search bar, and you can choose whether to display popular or new songs first.

All of the music on Bensound was created by Benjamin TISSOT, a composer based in France. He has been creating music for over 10 years.

3. dig.ccMixter

Commercial Use? Depends. Some songs are available for commercial use, some are not. It is easy to search only for songs which are.

Attribution Required? Yes. You must credit the musicians.

Paid Options? Yes. You can purchase licenses to get around commercial use or attribution restrictions. Personal licenses are $22 USD.

Musicians upload their work to ccMixter and make it available to creators like you at dig.ccMixter. Over 45,000 musicians have participated and this has resulted in a huge variety of music for you to discover.

Clicking ‘tag search’ at the top of the page is probably the best way to start your search. The ‘tags’ are displayed in three categories – genre, instrument, and style. You can click as many tags as you want from each category (i.e. you can check off ‘classical’ for the genre and then both bass and cello for instruments).

By default, your search will return results that have even just one of the tags you selected, but you can click ‘match all’ to see results that include all of your selected tags.

To the right of the screen, there’s a button called ‘filters’ and if you click it it’ll let you narrow your results by license (you can choose to only browse music that is free for commercial use). You can also specify if you only want instrumental songs.

If you do not use the ‘free for commercial use’ filter then you will need to click on songs to see whether their creative commons licenses allow commercial use.

If you’re an indie game developer, they have a Music for Video Games section for you too.

4. Free Music Archive

Commercial Use? Depends on the song.

Attribution Required? Depends on the song.

Paid Options? No. Everything is free.

There is a huge selection on Free Music Archive (they include songs curated by other sites, including other sites on this list), but using this site can be a bit trickier than using other sites because there are so many different licenses at play. There are even several licenses that do not allow songs to be used in YouTube videos (any Creative Commons license with ‘ND / No Derivatives’ will not allow for use in a video). You should read this page before downloading anything from the Free Music Archive to use on YouTube.

To start browsing Free Music Archive for music you can use for your videos, go to ‘Curators’ in the top menu, and select ‘Music for Video’. There’s no point in browsing music you might not be allowed to use for YouTube, and so the site has made it easy to find the music you can.

By default this screen will not include music you can use commercially, so you need to check ‘allows for commercial use’ in the side menu if that’s important to you. You can also select a genre and specify if you only want instrumental songs.

5. Free Stock Music

Commercial Use? Allowed.

Attribution Required? No.

Paid Options? No. Everything is free.

Simply choose a genre from the ‘Free Music’ drop-down menu to start browsing Free Stock Music’s collection. There are 10 genres including Pop, Hip Hop, and Corporate.

There are not a lot of ways to customize your search results on this site. You just can search for a keyword, like ‘happy’, but you can’t narrow your results down by things like instrument or mood like you can on some other sites. You just have to scroll through either your search results or the chosen genre until you find something.

To make it a bit easier, Free Stock Music has included detailed descriptions of each song you can read while your browsing and these descriptions do tend to include details about instruments and the moods of the songs.

You need to create a free account on Free Stock Music to access their songs.

6. Incompetech

Commercial Use? YouTube monetization allowed. Other kinds of commercial use may be restricted.

Attribution Required? Yes. You can put the attribution in your video description.

Paid Options? Yes. If you cannot (or do not want to) credit Incompetech then you can purchase a license instead. Licensing 1 piece of music costs $30.

Incompetech allows you to browse one of three ways. The ‘Full Search’ will be best for most people, but if you want to see every song in alphabetical order you can click on ‘Full List’, or you can browse collections like ‘Comedic’ in ‘View Collections’ (but not every piece of music on the site can be found in a collection).

If you go into ‘Full Search’ you’ll see a list of all the music and be able to filter it by feel, tempo, genre, and length. For example, you could set ‘Feels’ to ‘Grooving’ or ‘Length’ to ‘3:00-3:29’.

You can also use the search bar to look for an instrument or song title.

Clicking Expand All will reveal descriptions of all the songs and a ‘listen now’ button, but it will stretch the page a lot. You can see more details about individual songs, and listen to them, by clicking on the title. You won’t be taken to a new page, which is convenient.

You can also download all the music at once (by clicking ‘download all the music on this site at once’).

7. Josh Woodward

Commercial Use? Allowed.

Attribution Required? Yes. Attribution goes in your description box and it should look like this: Music - “SONG TITLE HERE” by Josh Woodward. Free download: http://joshwoodward.com/

Paid Options? Yes. If you cannot give Josh credit for some reason you can buy a single-song license for $30.

Josh Woodward is a singer-songwriter who has chosen to allow the free use of all his music (although he does appreciate donations).

You’ll immediately see a list of music on Josh’s site (not everything, there are over 200 songs on this site), and you can change what is displayed by using the filters on the right of the page. The filters available are Playlist, Genre, Album, Tags, Tempo, and Length.

The playlists are songs that have been bundled together around a theme like ‘fun and fast’ or ‘popular in videos’.

There are nine genres to choose from including ‘dark acoustic’ and ‘Americana’.

The albums are albums that Josh has released.

You can also search the song titles and lyrics by typing keywords into the search bar.

At the top of the page, there’s a player you can use to preview the songs, and you can choose whether to browse vocal songs or songs with lyrics (the results below may not appear to change, but if you use the player you’ll hear the instrumental version instead of the version with vocals).

8. Looperman

Commercial Use? Allowed for loops, but they make no guarantees.

Attribution Required? Unclear. The site doesn’t address attribution so it may be up to whoever has uploaded the loop you want to use.

Paid Options? No.

Looperman is a community for musicians. The goal is to provide instrumental loops and acapella vocals to other musicians for their own projects. In theory, all of the music loops and sounds are completely free to use in your projects, but since it’s a community they cannot guarantee that a user hasn’t uploaded something they don’t own (they aren’t allowed to, so in theory you should be safe, but the site doesn’t make any guarantees).

If you want to use vocals it seems like you have to talk to the person who owns the vocals about whether you can use them commercially or whether you need to include attribution.

9. Moby Gratis

Commercial Use? Never allowed. You cannot make money from the project you use this music in any way, including YouTube monetization or through a service like Patreon.

Attribution Required? Yes. Put this in your video description: Music: [Track Name] by Moby courtesy of Mobygratis.com

Paid Options? No.

Moby is a Grammy-nominated, VMA-winning, artist whose work you have probably heard on the radio. Even if you aren’t familiar with Moby himself, he has co-written, produced, and remixed music for other major artists like David Bowie, Guns N’ Roses, and Daft Punk.

Moby has chosen to make a catalog of his work available to independent filmmakers for non-commercial projects. Not all of the music provided on the site is available for YouTube, only the music marked Unreleased (if it has been released, then it will be flagged by YouTube’s copyright system). There is a lot of music under the ‘Unreleased’ category, though.

In order to download songs, you will need to make an account, and it takes about 24 hours for your account to be approved.

10. Musopen

Commercial Use? Depends on the song.

Attribution Required? Depends on the song

Paid Options? No.

Musopen provides music that is either in the ‘public domain’, or protected by Creative Commons licenses. If it’s in the public domain that means that nobody owns the copyright and anyone can use it for anything (however, Musopen does warn that they do not review uploads from their users so it is possible that someone could upload something they claim is public domain and be lying or wrong).

Creative Commons licenses all have their own conditions. Some may block commercial use, some may require attribution. The ones you need to watch out for as a video creator are the ones marked ‘No Derivatives’, because you can’t use songs licensed this way in videos.

You can start using Musopen by typing a keyword into the search bar on the main page, or scrolling down to select ‘Browse royalty free music recordings’. Besides music recordings, Musopen provides sheet music. If you have some musical talent and want to record your own music for your videos then this might be useful. If not, you probably want to stick to the recordings.

If you click on the Music Discovery Tool you’ll be able to search the recordings not only by instrument, but by license (so you can make sure you’re only looking at music that is in the public domain, or make sure you’re not looking at anything with that ‘No Derivatives’ condition.

11. TeknoAXE

Commercial Use? Allowed.

Attribution Required? Yes.

Paid Options? No.

All of the music on TeknoAXE is covered under a CC4.0 license, which means you can share and adapt the music for any purpose so long as you provide attribution.

TeknoAXE’s music is divided into four categories: electronic dance music, rock and metal music, orchestra and soundtrack, and miscellaneous. There are several sub-categories under every category.

Once you’ve clicked into subcategory you’ll see thumbnails for every song in the category. Click on one to be taken to the song’s page, where you can listen to it before you decide if you want to download.

There are tons of places where you can find great royalty-free music you can use on YouTube, so start hunting! Finding the perfect song for that cool montage you’ve got planned, your intro sequence, or the background of your vlog will take your content to a new level of quality.

12. PacDV

Commercial Use? Allowed.

Attribution Required? Yes. Music by <www.pacdv.com/sounds/>

Paid Options? No.

PacDV is primarily a sound effects site, but they have a music section as well (just click Music in the menu to the left under Sound Effects. ‘Free Music’ under resources is a completely different site). There is no way to filter down the music, and there is no search function.

There is a column in the list of music for ‘moods/emotions’, so you can get an idea of which songs you might want to listen to before you click to their pages.

13. Partners In Rhyme

Commercial Use? Allowed.

Attribution Required? Yes. Credit them in your video description.

Paid Options? Yes. You can’t buy a license for free songs to get around attribution, but they do offer paid music. At $100 or more per song, their paid music is outside the budget of most YouTubers.

Partners In Rhyme is mostly a paid site, and they’re at the pricier end of the spectrum for paid sites. The reason they’re included on this list is that they have kindly curated a selection of free music for use on YouTube or in projects like podcasts (the link above will take you to the free page, not the site in general).

There isn’t a search function for the free music, or a way to narrow down what’s displayed, but you can click the play button next to any title to hear what the song sounds like. To download, just right click and choose ‘save file’ or ‘save target as’.

14. Purple Planet Music

Commercial Use? Allowed.

Attribution Required? Yes. Put ‘Music: http://www.purple-planet.com’ in your video description.

Paid Options? Yes. If you want to use the music for anything besides YouTube, or if you don’t want to give them credit, then you can buy a license for $5.

Purple Planet Music is a team of three people, two of whom compose, perform, record, and produce all of the music you’ll find on this site (the third is the studio manager).

From the home page of Purple Planet choose one of the categories listed under ‘Royalty Free Music’. The categories are more related to moods than genres and include things like ‘cute’, ‘sneaky’, and ‘reflective’. Because they know you may want to use this music in film projects, you can even find categories like ‘dark backgrounds’.

Once you click into a category everything is listed, you can’t narrow your results. There’s not an overwhelming number of songs in each category, though, so it’s easy to choose something just by reading descriptions and listening to what’s there.

15. Sounds Crate

Commercial Use? Allowed.

Attribution Required? No.

Paid Options? Yes. You can upgrade to a Pro account for $49 per year to access more content.

Sounds Crate has music and sound effects. After you click into music, you’ll see thumbnails for sections related to a number of themes such as action music, corporate music, and hip hop. You’ll be able to preview and download all the songs in the category once you’re on the category page.

You are only allowed 5 downloads per day while you’re using Sounds Crate for free. They also request a $10 annual donation from free users, but it’s optional.

Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett is a writer and a lover of all things video.

Follow @Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett

Oct 26, 2023• Proven solutions

0

Choosing great royalty-free music for your YouTube videos will help put your audience in the right frame of mind, cover up flaws in your background audio, and help viewers feel more engaged with your content.

YouTube provides a free audio library, but since a lot of creators use it everyone’s videos can start to sound the same. Here are 15 alternative places where you can get royalty-free music for free! It’ll say at the beginning of every section whether they require attribution or allow commercial use.

Best Sites for Royalty-Free Music for YouTube Creators [Free Download]

If you are using Wondershare Filmora video editor , you will find there are some royalty-free music tracks and sound effects already pre-programmed in the Audio library. You will find different styles of music tacks, varying from Young & Bright to Electronic. Download Filmora, and you will get the royalty-free audio library and powerful video editing tools.

1. Audionautix

Commercial Use? Allowed.

Attribution Required? Yes. You must credit the site with ‘music by audionautix.com’ if you want to use this music (if you have a website, they ask that you include a link back to them).

Paid Options? No. All of the music on this site is free.

One of the first things you’ll see when you arrive on Audiionautix is a ‘YouTube Friendly’ button. They know that most people browsing their music library are looking for songs for YouTube videos, and that want you to know their music is safe from copyright claims.

All of the music in the Audionautix collection was created by one man, Jason Shaw, but there’s still a huge variety of tracks.

On the front page of Audionautix, there are three selections you can make to start your music search – genre, mood, and tempo. Genres range from hard rock to bluegrass to techno (there are 28 genres in total), and the moods include things like ‘uplifting’, ‘evil’, and ‘bouncy’ (there are 37 of those). The tempos are fast, medium, and slow. So, if you want a medium-tempo acoustic song with a calming mood, you can easily find all of the songs that meet those qualifications.

Not every combination will deliver results, so it can be easier to just choose two of the three search parameters.

2. Bensound

Commercial Use? Allowed.

Attribution Required? Yes. You must include one of the following in your video description: “Music: https://www.bensound.com/royalty-free-music” or “Music: Song title - Bensound.com”

Paid Options? Yes. If you don’t want to credit Bensound (or can’t for some reason) then you need to purchase a license. Licensing starts at about $28 USD (price listed as €24) per track.

The most popular music from Bensound is displayed on the first page. Beyond the titles of the tracks, each has a short description that will give you a good idea of what to expect from the song before you listen. You’ll need to listen to a song to know if you want it, but the descriptions are a fast way to figure out if you don’t want something. For example, ‘A New Beginning’ could be anything based on that title, but the description lets you know it’s ‘punk rock’ with an ‘epic/achievement’ feeling.

You can narrow down the music you are shown by choosing a genre from the menu near the top of your page (there are 8 genres including cinematic, electronica, and corporate/pop). There’s also a search bar, and you can choose whether to display popular or new songs first.

All of the music on Bensound was created by Benjamin TISSOT, a composer based in France. He has been creating music for over 10 years.

3. dig.ccMixter

Commercial Use? Depends. Some songs are available for commercial use, some are not. It is easy to search only for songs which are.

Attribution Required? Yes. You must credit the musicians.

Paid Options? Yes. You can purchase licenses to get around commercial use or attribution restrictions. Personal licenses are $22 USD.

Musicians upload their work to ccMixter and make it available to creators like you at dig.ccMixter. Over 45,000 musicians have participated and this has resulted in a huge variety of music for you to discover.

Clicking ‘tag search’ at the top of the page is probably the best way to start your search. The ‘tags’ are displayed in three categories – genre, instrument, and style. You can click as many tags as you want from each category (i.e. you can check off ‘classical’ for the genre and then both bass and cello for instruments).

By default, your search will return results that have even just one of the tags you selected, but you can click ‘match all’ to see results that include all of your selected tags.

To the right of the screen, there’s a button called ‘filters’ and if you click it it’ll let you narrow your results by license (you can choose to only browse music that is free for commercial use). You can also specify if you only want instrumental songs.

If you do not use the ‘free for commercial use’ filter then you will need to click on songs to see whether their creative commons licenses allow commercial use.

If you’re an indie game developer, they have a Music for Video Games section for you too.

4. Free Music Archive

Commercial Use? Depends on the song.

Attribution Required? Depends on the song.

Paid Options? No. Everything is free.

There is a huge selection on Free Music Archive (they include songs curated by other sites, including other sites on this list), but using this site can be a bit trickier than using other sites because there are so many different licenses at play. There are even several licenses that do not allow songs to be used in YouTube videos (any Creative Commons license with ‘ND / No Derivatives’ will not allow for use in a video). You should read this page before downloading anything from the Free Music Archive to use on YouTube.

To start browsing Free Music Archive for music you can use for your videos, go to ‘Curators’ in the top menu, and select ‘Music for Video’. There’s no point in browsing music you might not be allowed to use for YouTube, and so the site has made it easy to find the music you can.

By default this screen will not include music you can use commercially, so you need to check ‘allows for commercial use’ in the side menu if that’s important to you. You can also select a genre and specify if you only want instrumental songs.

5. Free Stock Music

Commercial Use? Allowed.

Attribution Required? No.

Paid Options? No. Everything is free.

Simply choose a genre from the ‘Free Music’ drop-down menu to start browsing Free Stock Music’s collection. There are 10 genres including Pop, Hip Hop, and Corporate.

There are not a lot of ways to customize your search results on this site. You just can search for a keyword, like ‘happy’, but you can’t narrow your results down by things like instrument or mood like you can on some other sites. You just have to scroll through either your search results or the chosen genre until you find something.

To make it a bit easier, Free Stock Music has included detailed descriptions of each song you can read while your browsing and these descriptions do tend to include details about instruments and the moods of the songs.

You need to create a free account on Free Stock Music to access their songs.

6. Incompetech

Commercial Use? YouTube monetization allowed. Other kinds of commercial use may be restricted.

Attribution Required? Yes. You can put the attribution in your video description.

Paid Options? Yes. If you cannot (or do not want to) credit Incompetech then you can purchase a license instead. Licensing 1 piece of music costs $30.

Incompetech allows you to browse one of three ways. The ‘Full Search’ will be best for most people, but if you want to see every song in alphabetical order you can click on ‘Full List’, or you can browse collections like ‘Comedic’ in ‘View Collections’ (but not every piece of music on the site can be found in a collection).

If you go into ‘Full Search’ you’ll see a list of all the music and be able to filter it by feel, tempo, genre, and length. For example, you could set ‘Feels’ to ‘Grooving’ or ‘Length’ to ‘3:00-3:29’.

You can also use the search bar to look for an instrument or song title.

Clicking Expand All will reveal descriptions of all the songs and a ‘listen now’ button, but it will stretch the page a lot. You can see more details about individual songs, and listen to them, by clicking on the title. You won’t be taken to a new page, which is convenient.

You can also download all the music at once (by clicking ‘download all the music on this site at once’).

7. Josh Woodward

Commercial Use? Allowed.

Attribution Required? Yes. Attribution goes in your description box and it should look like this: Music - “SONG TITLE HERE” by Josh Woodward. Free download: http://joshwoodward.com/

Paid Options? Yes. If you cannot give Josh credit for some reason you can buy a single-song license for $30.

Josh Woodward is a singer-songwriter who has chosen to allow the free use of all his music (although he does appreciate donations).

You’ll immediately see a list of music on Josh’s site (not everything, there are over 200 songs on this site), and you can change what is displayed by using the filters on the right of the page. The filters available are Playlist, Genre, Album, Tags, Tempo, and Length.

The playlists are songs that have been bundled together around a theme like ‘fun and fast’ or ‘popular in videos’.

There are nine genres to choose from including ‘dark acoustic’ and ‘Americana’.

The albums are albums that Josh has released.

You can also search the song titles and lyrics by typing keywords into the search bar.

At the top of the page, there’s a player you can use to preview the songs, and you can choose whether to browse vocal songs or songs with lyrics (the results below may not appear to change, but if you use the player you’ll hear the instrumental version instead of the version with vocals).

8. Looperman

Commercial Use? Allowed for loops, but they make no guarantees.

Attribution Required? Unclear. The site doesn’t address attribution so it may be up to whoever has uploaded the loop you want to use.

Paid Options? No.

Looperman is a community for musicians. The goal is to provide instrumental loops and acapella vocals to other musicians for their own projects. In theory, all of the music loops and sounds are completely free to use in your projects, but since it’s a community they cannot guarantee that a user hasn’t uploaded something they don’t own (they aren’t allowed to, so in theory you should be safe, but the site doesn’t make any guarantees).

If you want to use vocals it seems like you have to talk to the person who owns the vocals about whether you can use them commercially or whether you need to include attribution.

9. Moby Gratis

Commercial Use? Never allowed. You cannot make money from the project you use this music in any way, including YouTube monetization or through a service like Patreon.

Attribution Required? Yes. Put this in your video description: Music: [Track Name] by Moby courtesy of Mobygratis.com

Paid Options? No.

Moby is a Grammy-nominated, VMA-winning, artist whose work you have probably heard on the radio. Even if you aren’t familiar with Moby himself, he has co-written, produced, and remixed music for other major artists like David Bowie, Guns N’ Roses, and Daft Punk.

Moby has chosen to make a catalog of his work available to independent filmmakers for non-commercial projects. Not all of the music provided on the site is available for YouTube, only the music marked Unreleased (if it has been released, then it will be flagged by YouTube’s copyright system). There is a lot of music under the ‘Unreleased’ category, though.

In order to download songs, you will need to make an account, and it takes about 24 hours for your account to be approved.

10. Musopen

Commercial Use? Depends on the song.

Attribution Required? Depends on the song

Paid Options? No.

Musopen provides music that is either in the ‘public domain’, or protected by Creative Commons licenses. If it’s in the public domain that means that nobody owns the copyright and anyone can use it for anything (however, Musopen does warn that they do not review uploads from their users so it is possible that someone could upload something they claim is public domain and be lying or wrong).

Creative Commons licenses all have their own conditions. Some may block commercial use, some may require attribution. The ones you need to watch out for as a video creator are the ones marked ‘No Derivatives’, because you can’t use songs licensed this way in videos.

You can start using Musopen by typing a keyword into the search bar on the main page, or scrolling down to select ‘Browse royalty free music recordings’. Besides music recordings, Musopen provides sheet music. If you have some musical talent and want to record your own music for your videos then this might be useful. If not, you probably want to stick to the recordings.

If you click on the Music Discovery Tool you’ll be able to search the recordings not only by instrument, but by license (so you can make sure you’re only looking at music that is in the public domain, or make sure you’re not looking at anything with that ‘No Derivatives’ condition.

11. TeknoAXE

Commercial Use? Allowed.

Attribution Required? Yes.

Paid Options? No.

All of the music on TeknoAXE is covered under a CC4.0 license, which means you can share and adapt the music for any purpose so long as you provide attribution.

TeknoAXE’s music is divided into four categories: electronic dance music, rock and metal music, orchestra and soundtrack, and miscellaneous. There are several sub-categories under every category.

Once you’ve clicked into subcategory you’ll see thumbnails for every song in the category. Click on one to be taken to the song’s page, where you can listen to it before you decide if you want to download.

There are tons of places where you can find great royalty-free music you can use on YouTube, so start hunting! Finding the perfect song for that cool montage you’ve got planned, your intro sequence, or the background of your vlog will take your content to a new level of quality.

12. PacDV

Commercial Use? Allowed.

Attribution Required? Yes. Music by <www.pacdv.com/sounds/>

Paid Options? No.

PacDV is primarily a sound effects site, but they have a music section as well (just click Music in the menu to the left under Sound Effects. ‘Free Music’ under resources is a completely different site). There is no way to filter down the music, and there is no search function.

There is a column in the list of music for ‘moods/emotions’, so you can get an idea of which songs you might want to listen to before you click to their pages.

13. Partners In Rhyme

Commercial Use? Allowed.

Attribution Required? Yes. Credit them in your video description.

Paid Options? Yes. You can’t buy a license for free songs to get around attribution, but they do offer paid music. At $100 or more per song, their paid music is outside the budget of most YouTubers.

Partners In Rhyme is mostly a paid site, and they’re at the pricier end of the spectrum for paid sites. The reason they’re included on this list is that they have kindly curated a selection of free music for use on YouTube or in projects like podcasts (the link above will take you to the free page, not the site in general).

There isn’t a search function for the free music, or a way to narrow down what’s displayed, but you can click the play button next to any title to hear what the song sounds like. To download, just right click and choose ‘save file’ or ‘save target as’.

14. Purple Planet Music

Commercial Use? Allowed.

Attribution Required? Yes. Put ‘Music: http://www.purple-planet.com’ in your video description.

Paid Options? Yes. If you want to use the music for anything besides YouTube, or if you don’t want to give them credit, then you can buy a license for $5.

Purple Planet Music is a team of three people, two of whom compose, perform, record, and produce all of the music you’ll find on this site (the third is the studio manager).

From the home page of Purple Planet choose one of the categories listed under ‘Royalty Free Music’. The categories are more related to moods than genres and include things like ‘cute’, ‘sneaky’, and ‘reflective’. Because they know you may want to use this music in film projects, you can even find categories like ‘dark backgrounds’.

Once you click into a category everything is listed, you can’t narrow your results. There’s not an overwhelming number of songs in each category, though, so it’s easy to choose something just by reading descriptions and listening to what’s there.

15. Sounds Crate

Commercial Use? Allowed.

Attribution Required? No.

Paid Options? Yes. You can upgrade to a Pro account for $49 per year to access more content.

Sounds Crate has music and sound effects. After you click into music, you’ll see thumbnails for sections related to a number of themes such as action music, corporate music, and hip hop. You’ll be able to preview and download all the songs in the category once you’re on the category page.

You are only allowed 5 downloads per day while you’re using Sounds Crate for free. They also request a $10 annual donation from free users, but it’s optional.

Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett is a writer and a lover of all things video.

Follow @Richard Bennett

Breaking Barriers: Increasing Viewership on YouTube

Get More Viewers with Social Media Marketing for YouTube

Richard Bennett

Oct 26, 2023• Proven solutions

0

After uploading your video on YouTube, you may want to sit back and enjoy the massive uptick of views and subscribers. However, until you have established a big following on YouTube, only a few people are going to see your freshly published video… unless you share on social media.

So don’t relax yet, it’s time to spread the word about your video and channel on social media, such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, and Reddit.

Why is social media the best place to share your YouTube video? Let’s take a quick look at the statistics of some of the biggest social platforms in the world:

- Facebook has over 2.1 billion monthly active users.

- Instagram has approximately 800 million monthly active users.

- Twitter has approximately 330 million monthly active users.

- Reddit has approximately 330 million monthly active users.

- Snapchat has approximately 200 million monthly active users.

While your loyal viewers might watch your videos on YouTube, YouTube might not be the platform they spend the most time on.

Start by understanding your audience. If your YouTube channel is discussing fan theories for a popular television show, then Twitter and Reddit should be where you direct your efforts. If you are creating video content that has a lot of visual appeal, like travel or photography, then Instagram and Snapchat are better for cross-promotional content.

By promoting on the right social platform, there’s a better chance of discoverability. Additionally, branding that is consistent across all social media increases the trust among your viewers. Consistency does not mean simply putting the YouTube video onto Instagram or sharing it on Facebook.

Content is not one-size fits all!

Regardless of what platform your viewers are spending most of their time on, it’s important to understand how the community interacts. Sharing your video content on Facebook is different than on Reddit. What may be okay on one platform may come across as spam in another.

In this post, we will go through the best practices of sharing and engaging with your audience on 5 of the most popular social media channels.

Table of Content:

1. Instagram
2. Facebook
3. Twitter
4. Reddit
5. Snapchat

Part 1: Instagram for YouTube Channel Marketing

There is a lot of content today and therefore, audiences are more selective about how they choose to spend their time.

Take this example: Before you go to the theater to watch a movie, you might see a poster or a trailer first.

A movie poster lets you know this movie is coming to theatres and the trailer gives you a taste of what to expect before you buy the ticket and sit in the theater for two hours. If the promotional materials don’t entice, you wouldn’t go see the movie.

Instagram can work much in the same way for your YouTube channel. Your Instagram account can be a platform for attracting new viewers and hyping up your loyal following.

1. Using Bite-sized Snackable Content on Instagram

Images and one-minute long videos can engage with your users, help them work up an appetite for your videos, and direct them to your YouTube channel for more.

The great thing about Instagram — compared to YouTube — is that it’s easier to produce content for Instagram every day without exhausting your resources.

Be thinking about what you can post on to Instagram while you work on your YouTube video. You want a really attractive image or short video, which can be something you capture as you work on your long-form video: short preview or behind the scenes footage.

2. Share Your Life

Instagram allows you to consistently post content from your life. This allows you to connect with your audience as they discover more about you, so when it comes time for the YouTube video, they feel that have an established relationship with you.

They see your picture or video on their feed every day after all. You and your followers are practically friends.

While Instagram has multiple ways you can post onto the platform, we will talk about two very different strategies:

How YouTubers Should Post on Instagram Feed

When you post an image or a video onto Instagram directly it will be on your timeline and acts as a tile for your whole Instagram feed page. This piece of content will stay on your page forever, or until you delete it.

Like your YouTube videos, the content you post to your Instagram directly should have a cohesive theme that matches your branding. Keep an eye on your: -

- Aesthetic

- Caption

- Filter

As Instagram has grown in popularity, a lot of tools have been developed to help creators like yourself. Here are a few apps that you can include in your kit:

- VSCO: A photo editor app that will allow you to clean up and enhance details to really make your visuals pop.

- UNUM: An Instagram planner app that enables you to visualize and pre-plan your post.

- Later: A scheduling tool you can use to auto-publish to directly to Instagram.

- Planoly: Drag and drop scheduler and planner, allows you to see the whole grid before posting.

Here’s Liza Koshy’s Instagram feed. As you can see, she has a clear style and also a variety of content. If you haven’t heard of Liza Koshy and found her through Instagram, you get curious: “What does she do?” Instagram is fantastic for building intrigue and garnering interest.

Instagram: Liza Koshy

This will be a good place to post a teaser of your latest video, upload an inspiring image, or share an interesting piece of content that shows the world what you are all about.

Have a different type of content lined up. You don’t want someone to end up on your Instagram page and only see selfies or inspiring quotes.

You won’t know which type of content will hook your next fan… so experiment.

When you post onto Instagram directly, you can’t add a are unable to link in the caption. This has been a bane for marketers and creators since the beginning of Instagram.

Instagram: Pointless Blog

While Instagram is a great engagement platform, it hasn’t been the best channel for those who want to have a direct call to action. The old method was to direct the viewer to your Instagram bio where there is the only place to post a link.

However, once you’ve gained a large following (10K) you will be able to attached links in Instagram Story.

2. How YouTubers Should on Post Instagram Story

Instagram Story allows you to post a series of images and videos over the course of 24 hours. After that, the collection of content — or “story” — from that day disappears.

1. Don’t want your Instagram Story to disappear forever?

There is a feature called “Highlight” which archives your stories so that you can view them later, however, they will be kept on your Instagram profile page. This allows visitors to see your best stories and have prepared content even when you go 24 hours without posting something new.

Instagram: Marianna Hewitt

2. Use Instagram Story to Make an Announcement

While you are uploading your latest video to YouTube, go on Instagram Story and let your followers know.

Unlike posting directly to the Instagram timeline, once you reach a certain milestone, Instagram Story allows you to create a link right in the content. The ability to offer something timely and encourage the viewer to swipe up is a fantastic way to catch your audience when they are most interested in your content. By doing so, you redirect them from Instagram to your YouTube video.

Instagram: Jenn Im

Don’t think of Instagram Story as simply a mean for promoting your video, but a chance to give your loyal viewers an exclusive view into your process, allow them to get familiar with your personality and increase the exposure of your brand as a whole, solidifying your relationship.

Part 2: Facebook for YouTube Channel Marketing

Facebook is the world’s most popular social media platform. With that claim, it can help any new YouTuber find and grow their audience. It doesn’t matter if their channel is about fashion or karate, Facebook is an appropriate platform for interacting with the audience, as long as the content you share is relevant and click-worthy.

There are a number of ways to share content on Facebook:

- Sharing on your own personal timeline allows your Friends to see the content.

- Sharing directly to a particular group or person’s feed assures those in the group or that specific person will see the content.

- Sharing via a separate Page you’ve built for your YouTube channel allows those who are following the page to see the content.

1. Improve YouTube Video Thumbnail on Facebook

Facebook doesn’t make it easy for YouTubers to show their video on Facebook’s news feed, especially if it is hosted on YouTube.

When you post your video from YouTube directly to Facebook, it’ll look something like the image above. Unremarkable. While your audience can still view the video on the Facebook timeline, your fans scrolling by wouldn’t even notice it.

This is Facebook’s way of encouraging you to post videos directly to Facebook’s platform. Which is something you should consider as well, but as you are currently working to grow your YouTube channel, it’s good to focus on this task first.

Well, how do you make the post look better? There is a tool calledThumb Tube that gives you full sized image on Facebook:

Thumb Tube takes your YouTube video link and redirects it so it is now hosted on ThumbTube.com. Yet, anyone viewing the video there is watching on YouTube, not Facebook. This allows you to still capture all the views, likes, and comments on YouTube.

1. Managing a Facebook Page for Your YouTube Channel

Know this, Facebook has been around for over a decade, and establishing yourself on the social network in 2018 is not what it was like in the late ‘00s. Hard truths: building a following from scratch is going to be a lot of work.

1. Growing on Facebook is Hard

Before you go and start committing yourself to Facebook, consider your capacity and your audience: are you able to dedicate time and effort on Facebook? Is this the best platform to reach your viewers?

So Facebook is for you. How should you approach it?

2. Setup a Facebook Page for your YouTube Channel

This separates your personal account from your channel, allowing you to still have some autonomy. You don’t necessarily want your fans to be your friends… On top of that, having a separate page for your channel enables you to keep a consistent branding, which is important in getting more likes and subscribers.

To set up a separate Facebook Page:

1. Go to Facebook, and click “Pages” in the right-hand column

1. Click “Create Pages”
2. Let Facebook know whether your Page will be classified as a “Business or Brand” or a “Community or Public Figure”

1. Name your Page, preferably your YouTube channel name
2. Add Profile and Cover pictures
3. INVITE!

Treat your Facebook Page like another homepage for your channel. Landing on your page might be the first interaction the audience will have with your brand, so it is important that it is similar to your YouTube channel. This means, the logo has to match, the descriptions need to be aligned, and the cover photo should somewhat resemble your YouTube channel art.

Once you are confident that all the Facebook elements are consistent, it’s time to start marketing.

3. Invite Your Facebook Friends to Like Your Page

Your circle of friends will give you your initial burst needed to grow your YouTube channel, as they like and comment on your videos. The more engagement you get, the more impressions your post will earn not just from your friends, but from your friends’ friends. This expands your network.

However, don’t post the same thing over and over again. It’ll come across as spam to your followers, and it’ll also look lazy if someone lands on your page and see the same piece of content repeated on your news feed.

Facebook is best if you are consistently sharing a variety of content related to your channel.

This does not mean you have to be creating them all. If you were to post five times a week, perhaps only one of the post can be originally created by you. Curate content (i.e. blog, infographics, podcasts, images) that matches your audience’s interest. By always having engaging content that your fans are eager to like, share, and comment, this will give your videos more exposure when it is time to share it.

Pro Tip: Save time by scheduling your Facebook content ahead of time. By batching your Facebook content to be uploaded in one sitting, you can have a week to a month of content prepped ahead of time, so you can go back to focusing on YouTube.

Managing Facebook as a channel to build your YouTube audience can be very effective, but it is a lot of work in itself.

Managing Facebook involves:

- Posting content

- Responding to comments

- Engaging with Facebook groups

- Tube Ritual (Video Marketing YouTube Group)

- Beauty and the Vlog (Fashion and Beauty YouTube Group)

- Travel Vloggers United (Travel YouTube Group)

- Evaluating performance repeatedly

Don’t spread yourself too thin. If YouTube is your priority, all other social media communities should be complementary, not an obligation.

Part 3: Twitter for YouTube Channel Marketing

Unlike Facebook or Instagram, Twitter is a platform where you must be ready with a large amount of valuable content to share, otherwise, you will be lost in the noise. Don’t be afraid to tweet similar content throughout a day. As long as it is done well and isn’t misleading viewers, it wouldn’t be considered spam.

Twitter allows you to get in front of some of the most influential people on the Internet and stay on top of global trends. It is not always easy to get noticed on Twitter, but when your content really resonates, it’s also hard to be ignored.

1. Take Advantage of Trending Hashtags

In order to be successful on Twitter, you must be ready to jump onto a relevant trend. If you are talking about something that nobody is interested in, you might not be heard at all. Keep an eye on the most popular hashtags for that day and get involved with a conversation.

While you should definitely tweet and gain engagement for your YouTube videos, you will also need to tweet out other content.

Constantly keeping an eye on what the world is talking about gives you an idea of what is important to discuss. This may even help guide your next YouTube video.

2. Tag Brands and Influencers

Twitter is a great platform if your channel showcases brands, personalities, or influencers because it gives you the ability to get in front of them. Getting a big brand or an influencer to share your video can earn you a lot more Twitter followers as well as a lot more views to your channel.

An effective way for YouTubers to use Twitter is to be active during an event. If you know that the event will get a lot of attention and the content you are producing is relevant to that audience, then use the official hashtag, tag an attendee, and get that crowd who are actively engaged during the duration of the event to view your videos.

Creators sharing their thoughts on #VidCon

Connecting with people with a lot of clouts can increase your credibility on the topic you are covering.

However, in order for these high-influence people to notice your YouTube channel via Twitter, you must commit to building your Twitter account and audience.

If your Twitter account looks amateurish, for example: if you display picture is still an egg, then any attempts at reaching out to these big brands and influencers will be a loss. Stay active and over time you will gain a following to support you.

Part 4: Reddit for YouTube Channel Marketing

Reddit for YouTube creators can be an intimidating place. Reddit users (Redditors) can sniff out marketing material or misleading click-baits.

You can commit this sin on other platform and get away with it, but on Reddit, this type of posting at best will not be ignored and at worst roasted alive in front of the whole platform.

Because of the anonymity of Reddit’s user base, the comments for posts are often unfiltered.

1. Good Content Gets Seen and Discussed On Reddit

If you can tap into the community values of Reddit, contribute to conversations and share interesting and relevant content there might not be a better platform to grow your YouTube audience.

Many media organizations with a significant following are starting to use Reddit to find stories and viral content . The chances of being discovered on Reddit is much higher than on Twitter, as the upvote/downvote system gives your good work a higher platform to stand on while lowering the bad content to Reddit’s cellar.

2. Don’t Promote Yourself

Reddit is not a platform where you enter, drop your content in, and expect people to engage with it. For Redditors, this is intrusive and unappreciated.

Imagine being at a party and talking to your friends, and then someone you don’t know comes in and starts a conversation about the latest movie, singing a song and asking for feedback, or discussing the coolest restaurants in town. That would be annoying, right?

You cannot go into Reddit blasting your content, because it wasn’t welcomed content.

Before you can get people on Reddit to care about your YouTube channel, you must show them that you care about them — the community.

From day one, you need to be a part of the community, and your reason for being a part of the community cannot be because you want to share content. If you have a hidden agenda, you will be discovered.

3. Understand the Reddiquettes

When engaging on Reddit, you must abide by rules which are called “reddiquette.” There are global reddiquettes and then there are individual community reddiquette.

Global reddiquettes:

- Search for duplicate content before posting.

- Consume the content before voting.

- Act as you would in real life.

- And more.

3. Community reddiquettes

These are additional rules that the individual Reddit communities enforce. Be sure to read these rules before posting onto these specific communities. Understanding these rules will help you understand the purpose of this community.

Here is an example of reddiquettes for r/Cameras:

You only have so many strikes with Reddit before your account gets banned. But don’t worry about all that. Be your awesome self.

When you are on Reddit, don’t think of yourself as a YouTuber, think of yourself as a redditor, if you do, you’ll have a bright future on the platform.

4. Subreddits Where You Can Post Freely

While there are some subreddits that demand relevant content, some subreddits will allow you post your videos as long as 90% of your content are from another source aside from your YouTube channel, you won’t be considered spammy.

- r/YouTuber: Get critiques for your videos

- r/Videos: Post any video into the masses

- r/YTPL: Share a whole playlist

Because these subreddits are unfocused and loaded with a variety of content, it’s often tricky to find your specific audience there. Then again, you’ll never know.

Part 5: Snapchat for YouTube Channel Marketing

If your audience craves immediacy and exclusivity, then Snapchat is definitely the social media channel that you’d want to explore.

The ephemeral nature of Snapchat makes it a unique way of marketing your content as what you snap will only be available within 24 hours. Because what you post will only be available for a brief moment in time, those who are following you will dedicate their attention to your content knowing that if they miss it, they might never see it again.

This undivided attention cannot be recreated on Twitter, Facebook, or Reddit, as users can easily scroll pass your content.

The key is to get your audience a personalized experience on your Snapchat. What can you offer on Snapchat that they can’t get elsewhere?

1. Don’t Worry About Professionalism

Snapchat is young, fun, and silly. On Snapchat, your personality needs to be the fuel for your content.

Pull the curtains open and welcome your audience through the private window into your life. Treat your Snapchat audience less as a faceless crowd but as your friends and family. Take them on a private tour, show them unseen footage of your video, and don’t be afraid to use the filters, text, and theme to liven up your content.

Start following some popular YouTubers on Snapchat and you can quickly see how they are using it. Don’t use Snapchat as a place to perform, but instead a place for you to be spontaneous. Remember these content don’t last forever, so don’t take forever planning it out, just start doing it.

Promoting your Snapchat account can be hard if you are not a celebrity. Unlike Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram, there is no in-app discovery or suggested users feature in Snapchat. The user will have to search for who they want to follow. Unless someone already knows about you, it’s unlikely that they will be following you on Snapchat. This makes promoting your account to your viewers essential for growth.

YouTuber, Markiplier tweeting his Snapchat username.

Here are a few quick tips for promoting your Snapchat account.

- Make sure your Snapchat handle is present on your YouTube channel and other social media platforms.

- Make yourSnapchat snapcode your profile pic, so people can scan and connect with you.

- Get other Snapchatters to give you a shout-out on their account.

Marketing on social media is essential for not only growing your YouTube channel but your entire brand. If you like more content around social media marketing for your channel, join our community of YouTubers where we are always discussing new tactics and opportunities.

Is there a social media platform that you want to test out but not sure how? Leave a comment below.

Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett is a writer and a lover of all things video.

Follow @Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett

Oct 26, 2023• Proven solutions

0

After uploading your video on YouTube, you may want to sit back and enjoy the massive uptick of views and subscribers. However, until you have established a big following on YouTube, only a few people are going to see your freshly published video… unless you share on social media.

So don’t relax yet, it’s time to spread the word about your video and channel on social media, such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, and Reddit.

Why is social media the best place to share your YouTube video? Let’s take a quick look at the statistics of some of the biggest social platforms in the world:

- Facebook has over 2.1 billion monthly active users.

- Instagram has approximately 800 million monthly active users.

- Twitter has approximately 330 million monthly active users.

- Reddit has approximately 330 million monthly active users.

- Snapchat has approximately 200 million monthly active users.

While your loyal viewers might watch your videos on YouTube, YouTube might not be the platform they spend the most time on.

Start by understanding your audience. If your YouTube channel is discussing fan theories for a popular television show, then Twitter and Reddit should be where you direct your efforts. If you are creating video content that has a lot of visual appeal, like travel or photography, then Instagram and Snapchat are better for cross-promotional content.

By promoting on the right social platform, there’s a better chance of discoverability. Additionally, branding that is consistent across all social media increases the trust among your viewers. Consistency does not mean simply putting the YouTube video onto Instagram or sharing it on Facebook.

Content is not one-size fits all!

Regardless of what platform your viewers are spending most of their time on, it’s important to understand how the community interacts. Sharing your video content on Facebook is different than on Reddit. What may be okay on one platform may come across as spam in another.

In this post, we will go through the best practices of sharing and engaging with your audience on 5 of the most popular social media channels.

Table of Content:

1. Instagram
2. Facebook
3. Twitter
4. Reddit
5. Snapchat

Part 1: Instagram for YouTube Channel Marketing

There is a lot of content today and therefore, audiences are more selective about how they choose to spend their time.

Take this example: Before you go to the theater to watch a movie, you might see a poster or a trailer first.

A movie poster lets you know this movie is coming to theatres and the trailer gives you a taste of what to expect before you buy the ticket and sit in the theater for two hours. If the promotional materials don’t entice, you wouldn’t go see the movie.

Instagram can work much in the same way for your YouTube channel. Your Instagram account can be a platform for attracting new viewers and hyping up your loyal following.

1. Using Bite-sized Snackable Content on Instagram

Images and one-minute long videos can engage with your users, help them work up an appetite for your videos, and direct them to your YouTube channel for more.

The great thing about Instagram — compared to YouTube — is that it’s easier to produce content for Instagram every day without exhausting your resources.

Be thinking about what you can post on to Instagram while you work on your YouTube video. You want a really attractive image or short video, which can be something you capture as you work on your long-form video: short preview or behind the scenes footage.

2. Share Your Life

Instagram allows you to consistently post content from your life. This allows you to connect with your audience as they discover more about you, so when it comes time for the YouTube video, they feel that have an established relationship with you.

They see your picture or video on their feed every day after all. You and your followers are practically friends.

While Instagram has multiple ways you can post onto the platform, we will talk about two very different strategies:

How YouTubers Should Post on Instagram Feed

When you post an image or a video onto Instagram directly it will be on your timeline and acts as a tile for your whole Instagram feed page. This piece of content will stay on your page forever, or until you delete it.

Like your YouTube videos, the content you post to your Instagram directly should have a cohesive theme that matches your branding. Keep an eye on your: -

- Aesthetic

- Caption

- Filter

As Instagram has grown in popularity, a lot of tools have been developed to help creators like yourself. Here are a few apps that you can include in your kit:

- VSCO: A photo editor app that will allow you to clean up and enhance details to really make your visuals pop.

- UNUM: An Instagram planner app that enables you to visualize and pre-plan your post.

- Later: A scheduling tool you can use to auto-publish to directly to Instagram.

- Planoly: Drag and drop scheduler and planner, allows you to see the whole grid before posting.

Here’s Liza Koshy’s Instagram feed. As you can see, she has a clear style and also a variety of content. If you haven’t heard of Liza Koshy and found her through Instagram, you get curious: “What does she do?” Instagram is fantastic for building intrigue and garnering interest.

Instagram: Liza Koshy

This will be a good place to post a teaser of your latest video, upload an inspiring image, or share an interesting piece of content that shows the world what you are all about.

Have a different type of content lined up. You don’t want someone to end up on your Instagram page and only see selfies or inspiring quotes.

You won’t know which type of content will hook your next fan… so experiment.

When you post onto Instagram directly, you can’t add a are unable to link in the caption. This has been a bane for marketers and creators since the beginning of Instagram.

Instagram: Pointless Blog

While Instagram is a great engagement platform, it hasn’t been the best channel for those who want to have a direct call to action. The old method was to direct the viewer to your Instagram bio where there is the only place to post a link.

However, once you’ve gained a large following (10K) you will be able to attached links in Instagram Story.

2. How YouTubers Should on Post Instagram Story

Instagram Story allows you to post a series of images and videos over the course of 24 hours. After that, the collection of content — or “story” — from that day disappears.

1. Don’t want your Instagram Story to disappear forever?

There is a feature called “Highlight” which archives your stories so that you can view them later, however, they will be kept on your Instagram profile page. This allows visitors to see your best stories and have prepared content even when you go 24 hours without posting something new.

Instagram: Marianna Hewitt

2. Use Instagram Story to Make an Announcement

While you are uploading your latest video to YouTube, go on Instagram Story and let your followers know.

Unlike posting directly to the Instagram timeline, once you reach a certain milestone, Instagram Story allows you to create a link right in the content. The ability to offer something timely and encourage the viewer to swipe up is a fantastic way to catch your audience when they are most interested in your content. By doing so, you redirect them from Instagram to your YouTube video.

Instagram: Jenn Im

Don’t think of Instagram Story as simply a mean for promoting your video, but a chance to give your loyal viewers an exclusive view into your process, allow them to get familiar with your personality and increase the exposure of your brand as a whole, solidifying your relationship.

Part 2: Facebook for YouTube Channel Marketing

Facebook is the world’s most popular social media platform. With that claim, it can help any new YouTuber find and grow their audience. It doesn’t matter if their channel is about fashion or karate, Facebook is an appropriate platform for interacting with the audience, as long as the content you share is relevant and click-worthy.

There are a number of ways to share content on Facebook:

- Sharing on your own personal timeline allows your Friends to see the content.

- Sharing directly to a particular group or person’s feed assures those in the group or that specific person will see the content.

- Sharing via a separate Page you’ve built for your YouTube channel allows those who are following the page to see the content.

1. Improve YouTube Video Thumbnail on Facebook

Facebook doesn’t make it easy for YouTubers to show their video on Facebook’s news feed, especially if it is hosted on YouTube.

When you post your video from YouTube directly to Facebook, it’ll look something like the image above. Unremarkable. While your audience can still view the video on the Facebook timeline, your fans scrolling by wouldn’t even notice it.

This is Facebook’s way of encouraging you to post videos directly to Facebook’s platform. Which is something you should consider as well, but as you are currently working to grow your YouTube channel, it’s good to focus on this task first.

Well, how do you make the post look better? There is a tool calledThumb Tube that gives you full sized image on Facebook:

Thumb Tube takes your YouTube video link and redirects it so it is now hosted on ThumbTube.com. Yet, anyone viewing the video there is watching on YouTube, not Facebook. This allows you to still capture all the views, likes, and comments on YouTube.

1. Managing a Facebook Page for Your YouTube Channel

Know this, Facebook has been around for over a decade, and establishing yourself on the social network in 2018 is not what it was like in the late ‘00s. Hard truths: building a following from scratch is going to be a lot of work.

1. Growing on Facebook is Hard

Before you go and start committing yourself to Facebook, consider your capacity and your audience: are you able to dedicate time and effort on Facebook? Is this the best platform to reach your viewers?

So Facebook is for you. How should you approach it?

2. Setup a Facebook Page for your YouTube Channel

This separates your personal account from your channel, allowing you to still have some autonomy. You don’t necessarily want your fans to be your friends… On top of that, having a separate page for your channel enables you to keep a consistent branding, which is important in getting more likes and subscribers.

To set up a separate Facebook Page:

1. Go to Facebook, and click “Pages” in the right-hand column

1. Click “Create Pages”
2. Let Facebook know whether your Page will be classified as a “Business or Brand” or a “Community or Public Figure”

1. Name your Page, preferably your YouTube channel name
2. Add Profile and Cover pictures
3. INVITE!

Treat your Facebook Page like another homepage for your channel. Landing on your page might be the first interaction the audience will have with your brand, so it is important that it is similar to your YouTube channel. This means, the logo has to match, the descriptions need to be aligned, and the cover photo should somewhat resemble your YouTube channel art.

Once you are confident that all the Facebook elements are consistent, it’s time to start marketing.

3. Invite Your Facebook Friends to Like Your Page

Your circle of friends will give you your initial burst needed to grow your YouTube channel, as they like and comment on your videos. The more engagement you get, the more impressions your post will earn not just from your friends, but from your friends’ friends. This expands your network.

However, don’t post the same thing over and over again. It’ll come across as spam to your followers, and it’ll also look lazy if someone lands on your page and see the same piece of content repeated on your news feed.

Facebook is best if you are consistently sharing a variety of content related to your channel.

This does not mean you have to be creating them all. If you were to post five times a week, perhaps only one of the post can be originally created by you. Curate content (i.e. blog, infographics, podcasts, images) that matches your audience’s interest. By always having engaging content that your fans are eager to like, share, and comment, this will give your videos more exposure when it is time to share it.

Pro Tip: Save time by scheduling your Facebook content ahead of time. By batching your Facebook content to be uploaded in one sitting, you can have a week to a month of content prepped ahead of time, so you can go back to focusing on YouTube.

Managing Facebook as a channel to build your YouTube audience can be very effective, but it is a lot of work in itself.

Managing Facebook involves:

- Posting content

- Responding to comments

- Engaging with Facebook groups

- Tube Ritual (Video Marketing YouTube Group)

- Beauty and the Vlog (Fashion and Beauty YouTube Group)

- Travel Vloggers United (Travel YouTube Group)

- Evaluating performance repeatedly

Don’t spread yourself too thin. If YouTube is your priority, all other social media communities should be complementary, not an obligation.

Part 3: Twitter for YouTube Channel Marketing

Unlike Facebook or Instagram, Twitter is a platform where you must be ready with a large amount of valuable content to share, otherwise, you will be lost in the noise. Don’t be afraid to tweet similar content throughout a day. As long as it is done well and isn’t misleading viewers, it wouldn’t be considered spam.

Twitter allows you to get in front of some of the most influential people on the Internet and stay on top of global trends. It is not always easy to get noticed on Twitter, but when your content really resonates, it’s also hard to be ignored.

1. Take Advantage of Trending Hashtags

In order to be successful on Twitter, you must be ready to jump onto a relevant trend. If you are talking about something that nobody is interested in, you might not be heard at all. Keep an eye on the most popular hashtags for that day and get involved with a conversation.

While you should definitely tweet and gain engagement for your YouTube videos, you will also need to tweet out other content.

Constantly keeping an eye on what the world is talking about gives you an idea of what is important to discuss. This may even help guide your next YouTube video.

2. Tag Brands and Influencers

Twitter is a great platform if your channel showcases brands, personalities, or influencers because it gives you the ability to get in front of them. Getting a big brand or an influencer to share your video can earn you a lot more Twitter followers as well as a lot more views to your channel.

An effective way for YouTubers to use Twitter is to be active during an event. If you know that the event will get a lot of attention and the content you are producing is relevant to that audience, then use the official hashtag, tag an attendee, and get that crowd who are actively engaged during the duration of the event to view your videos.

Creators sharing their thoughts on #VidCon

Connecting with people with a lot of clouts can increase your credibility on the topic you are covering.

However, in order for these high-influence people to notice your YouTube channel via Twitter, you must commit to building your Twitter account and audience.

If your Twitter account looks amateurish, for example: if you display picture is still an egg, then any attempts at reaching out to these big brands and influencers will be a loss. Stay active and over time you will gain a following to support you.

Part 4: Reddit for YouTube Channel Marketing

Reddit for YouTube creators can be an intimidating place. Reddit users (Redditors) can sniff out marketing material or misleading click-baits.

You can commit this sin on other platform and get away with it, but on Reddit, this type of posting at best will not be ignored and at worst roasted alive in front of the whole platform.

Because of the anonymity of Reddit’s user base, the comments for posts are often unfiltered.

1. Good Content Gets Seen and Discussed On Reddit

If you can tap into the community values of Reddit, contribute to conversations and share interesting and relevant content there might not be a better platform to grow your YouTube audience.

Many media organizations with a significant following are starting to use Reddit to find stories and viral content . The chances of being discovered on Reddit is much higher than on Twitter, as the upvote/downvote system gives your good work a higher platform to stand on while lowering the bad content to Reddit’s cellar.

2. Don’t Promote Yourself

Reddit is not a platform where you enter, drop your content in, and expect people to engage with it. For Redditors, this is intrusive and unappreciated.

Imagine being at a party and talking to your friends, and then someone you don’t know comes in and starts a conversation about the latest movie, singing a song and asking for feedback, or discussing the coolest restaurants in town. That would be annoying, right?

You cannot go into Reddit blasting your content, because it wasn’t welcomed content.

Before you can get people on Reddit to care about your YouTube channel, you must show them that you care about them — the community.

From day one, you need to be a part of the community, and your reason for being a part of the community cannot be because you want to share content. If you have a hidden agenda, you will be discovered.

3. Understand the Reddiquettes

When engaging on Reddit, you must abide by rules which are called “reddiquette.” There are global reddiquettes and then there are individual community reddiquette.

Global reddiquettes:

- Search for duplicate content before posting.

- Consume the content before voting.

- Act as you would in real life.

- And more.

3. Community reddiquettes

These are additional rules that the individual Reddit communities enforce. Be sure to read these rules before posting onto these specific communities. Understanding these rules will help you understand the purpose of this community.

Here is an example of reddiquettes for r/Cameras:

You only have so many strikes with Reddit before your account gets banned. But don’t worry about all that. Be your awesome self.

When you are on Reddit, don’t think of yourself as a YouTuber, think of yourself as a redditor, if you do, you’ll have a bright future on the platform.

4. Subreddits Where You Can Post Freely

While there are some subreddits that demand relevant content, some subreddits will allow you post your videos as long as 90% of your content are from another source aside from your YouTube channel, you won’t be considered spammy.

- r/YouTuber: Get critiques for your videos

- r/Videos: Post any video into the masses

- r/YTPL: Share a whole playlist

Because these subreddits are unfocused and loaded with a variety of content, it’s often tricky to find your specific audience there. Then again, you’ll never know.

Part 5: Snapchat for YouTube Channel Marketing

If your audience craves immediacy and exclusivity, then Snapchat is definitely the social media channel that you’d want to explore.

The ephemeral nature of Snapchat makes it a unique way of marketing your content as what you snap will only be available within 24 hours. Because what you post will only be available for a brief moment in time, those who are following you will dedicate their attention to your content knowing that if they miss it, they might never see it again.

This undivided attention cannot be recreated on Twitter, Facebook, or Reddit, as users can easily scroll pass your content.

The key is to get your audience a personalized experience on your Snapchat. What can you offer on Snapchat that they can’t get elsewhere?

1. Don’t Worry About Professionalism

Snapchat is young, fun, and silly. On Snapchat, your personality needs to be the fuel for your content.

Pull the curtains open and welcome your audience through the private window into your life. Treat your Snapchat audience less as a faceless crowd but as your friends and family. Take them on a private tour, show them unseen footage of your video, and don’t be afraid to use the filters, text, and theme to liven up your content.

Start following some popular YouTubers on Snapchat and you can quickly see how they are using it. Don’t use Snapchat as a place to perform, but instead a place for you to be spontaneous. Remember these content don’t last forever, so don’t take forever planning it out, just start doing it.

Promoting your Snapchat account can be hard if you are not a celebrity. Unlike Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram, there is no in-app discovery or suggested users feature in Snapchat. The user will have to search for who they want to follow. Unless someone already knows about you, it’s unlikely that they will be following you on Snapchat. This makes promoting your account to your viewers essential for growth.

YouTuber, Markiplier tweeting his Snapchat username.

Here are a few quick tips for promoting your Snapchat account.

- Make sure your Snapchat handle is present on your YouTube channel and other social media platforms.

- Make yourSnapchat snapcode your profile pic, so people can scan and connect with you.

- Get other Snapchatters to give you a shout-out on their account.

Marketing on social media is essential for not only growing your YouTube channel but your entire brand. If you like more content around social media marketing for your channel, join our community of YouTubers where we are always discussing new tactics and opportunities.

Is there a social media platform that you want to test out but not sure how? Leave a comment below.

Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett is a writer and a lover of all things video.

Follow @Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett

Oct 26, 2023• Proven solutions

0

After uploading your video on YouTube, you may want to sit back and enjoy the massive uptick of views and subscribers. However, until you have established a big following on YouTube, only a few people are going to see your freshly published video… unless you share on social media.

So don’t relax yet, it’s time to spread the word about your video and channel on social media, such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, and Reddit.

Why is social media the best place to share your YouTube video? Let’s take a quick look at the statistics of some of the biggest social platforms in the world:

- Facebook has over 2.1 billion monthly active users.

- Instagram has approximately 800 million monthly active users.

- Twitter has approximately 330 million monthly active users.

- Reddit has approximately 330 million monthly active users.

- Snapchat has approximately 200 million monthly active users.

While your loyal viewers might watch your videos on YouTube, YouTube might not be the platform they spend the most time on.

Start by understanding your audience. If your YouTube channel is discussing fan theories for a popular television show, then Twitter and Reddit should be where you direct your efforts. If you are creating video content that has a lot of visual appeal, like travel or photography, then Instagram and Snapchat are better for cross-promotional content.

By promoting on the right social platform, there’s a better chance of discoverability. Additionally, branding that is consistent across all social media increases the trust among your viewers. Consistency does not mean simply putting the YouTube video onto Instagram or sharing it on Facebook.

Content is not one-size fits all!

Regardless of what platform your viewers are spending most of their time on, it’s important to understand how the community interacts. Sharing your video content on Facebook is different than on Reddit. What may be okay on one platform may come across as spam in another.

In this post, we will go through the best practices of sharing and engaging with your audience on 5 of the most popular social media channels.

Table of Content:

1. Instagram
2. Facebook
3. Twitter
4. Reddit
5. Snapchat

Part 1: Instagram for YouTube Channel Marketing

There is a lot of content today and therefore, audiences are more selective about how they choose to spend their time.

Take this example: Before you go to the theater to watch a movie, you might see a poster or a trailer first.

A movie poster lets you know this movie is coming to theatres and the trailer gives you a taste of what to expect before you buy the ticket and sit in the theater for two hours. If the promotional materials don’t entice, you wouldn’t go see the movie.

Instagram can work much in the same way for your YouTube channel. Your Instagram account can be a platform for attracting new viewers and hyping up your loyal following.

1. Using Bite-sized Snackable Content on Instagram

Images and one-minute long videos can engage with your users, help them work up an appetite for your videos, and direct them to your YouTube channel for more.

The great thing about Instagram — compared to YouTube — is that it’s easier to produce content for Instagram every day without exhausting your resources.

Be thinking about what you can post on to Instagram while you work on your YouTube video. You want a really attractive image or short video, which can be something you capture as you work on your long-form video: short preview or behind the scenes footage.

2. Share Your Life

Instagram allows you to consistently post content from your life. This allows you to connect with your audience as they discover more about you, so when it comes time for the YouTube video, they feel that have an established relationship with you.

They see your picture or video on their feed every day after all. You and your followers are practically friends.

While Instagram has multiple ways you can post onto the platform, we will talk about two very different strategies:

How YouTubers Should Post on Instagram Feed

When you post an image or a video onto Instagram directly it will be on your timeline and acts as a tile for your whole Instagram feed page. This piece of content will stay on your page forever, or until you delete it.

Like your YouTube videos, the content you post to your Instagram directly should have a cohesive theme that matches your branding. Keep an eye on your: -

- Aesthetic

- Caption

- Filter

As Instagram has grown in popularity, a lot of tools have been developed to help creators like yourself. Here are a few apps that you can include in your kit:

- VSCO: A photo editor app that will allow you to clean up and enhance details to really make your visuals pop.

- UNUM: An Instagram planner app that enables you to visualize and pre-plan your post.

- Later: A scheduling tool you can use to auto-publish to directly to Instagram.

- Planoly: Drag and drop scheduler and planner, allows you to see the whole grid before posting.

Here’s Liza Koshy’s Instagram feed. As you can see, she has a clear style and also a variety of content. If you haven’t heard of Liza Koshy and found her through Instagram, you get curious: “What does she do?” Instagram is fantastic for building intrigue and garnering interest.

Instagram: Liza Koshy

This will be a good place to post a teaser of your latest video, upload an inspiring image, or share an interesting piece of content that shows the world what you are all about.

Have a different type of content lined up. You don’t want someone to end up on your Instagram page and only see selfies or inspiring quotes.

You won’t know which type of content will hook your next fan… so experiment.

When you post onto Instagram directly, you can’t add a are unable to link in the caption. This has been a bane for marketers and creators since the beginning of Instagram.

Instagram: Pointless Blog

While Instagram is a great engagement platform, it hasn’t been the best channel for those who want to have a direct call to action. The old method was to direct the viewer to your Instagram bio where there is the only place to post a link.

However, once you’ve gained a large following (10K) you will be able to attached links in Instagram Story.

2. How YouTubers Should on Post Instagram Story

Instagram Story allows you to post a series of images and videos over the course of 24 hours. After that, the collection of content — or “story” — from that day disappears.

1. Don’t want your Instagram Story to disappear forever?

There is a feature called “Highlight” which archives your stories so that you can view them later, however, they will be kept on your Instagram profile page. This allows visitors to see your best stories and have prepared content even when you go 24 hours without posting something new.

Instagram: Marianna Hewitt

2. Use Instagram Story to Make an Announcement

While you are uploading your latest video to YouTube, go on Instagram Story and let your followers know.

Unlike posting directly to the Instagram timeline, once you reach a certain milestone, Instagram Story allows you to create a link right in the content. The ability to offer something timely and encourage the viewer to swipe up is a fantastic way to catch your audience when they are most interested in your content. By doing so, you redirect them from Instagram to your YouTube video.

Instagram: Jenn Im

Don’t think of Instagram Story as simply a mean for promoting your video, but a chance to give your loyal viewers an exclusive view into your process, allow them to get familiar with your personality and increase the exposure of your brand as a whole, solidifying your relationship.

Part 2: Facebook for YouTube Channel Marketing

Facebook is the world’s most popular social media platform. With that claim, it can help any new YouTuber find and grow their audience. It doesn’t matter if their channel is about fashion or karate, Facebook is an appropriate platform for interacting with the audience, as long as the content you share is relevant and click-worthy.

There are a number of ways to share content on Facebook:

- Sharing on your own personal timeline allows your Friends to see the content.

- Sharing directly to a particular group or person’s feed assures those in the group or that specific person will see the content.

- Sharing via a separate Page you’ve built for your YouTube channel allows those who are following the page to see the content.

1. Improve YouTube Video Thumbnail on Facebook

Facebook doesn’t make it easy for YouTubers to show their video on Facebook’s news feed, especially if it is hosted on YouTube.

When you post your video from YouTube directly to Facebook, it’ll look something like the image above. Unremarkable. While your audience can still view the video on the Facebook timeline, your fans scrolling by wouldn’t even notice it.

This is Facebook’s way of encouraging you to post videos directly to Facebook’s platform. Which is something you should consider as well, but as you are currently working to grow your YouTube channel, it’s good to focus on this task first.

Well, how do you make the post look better? There is a tool calledThumb Tube that gives you full sized image on Facebook:

Thumb Tube takes your YouTube video link and redirects it so it is now hosted on ThumbTube.com. Yet, anyone viewing the video there is watching on YouTube, not Facebook. This allows you to still capture all the views, likes, and comments on YouTube.

1. Managing a Facebook Page for Your YouTube Channel

Know this, Facebook has been around for over a decade, and establishing yourself on the social network in 2018 is not what it was like in the late ‘00s. Hard truths: building a following from scratch is going to be a lot of work.

1. Growing on Facebook is Hard

Before you go and start committing yourself to Facebook, consider your capacity and your audience: are you able to dedicate time and effort on Facebook? Is this the best platform to reach your viewers?

So Facebook is for you. How should you approach it?

2. Setup a Facebook Page for your YouTube Channel

This separates your personal account from your channel, allowing you to still have some autonomy. You don’t necessarily want your fans to be your friends… On top of that, having a separate page for your channel enables you to keep a consistent branding, which is important in getting more likes and subscribers.

To set up a separate Facebook Page:

1. Go to Facebook, and click “Pages” in the right-hand column

1. Click “Create Pages”
2. Let Facebook know whether your Page will be classified as a “Business or Brand” or a “Community or Public Figure”

1. Name your Page, preferably your YouTube channel name
2. Add Profile and Cover pictures
3. INVITE!

Treat your Facebook Page like another homepage for your channel. Landing on your page might be the first interaction the audience will have with your brand, so it is important that it is similar to your YouTube channel. This means, the logo has to match, the descriptions need to be aligned, and the cover photo should somewhat resemble your YouTube channel art.

Once you are confident that all the Facebook elements are consistent, it’s time to start marketing.

3. Invite Your Facebook Friends to Like Your Page

Your circle of friends will give you your initial burst needed to grow your YouTube channel, as they like and comment on your videos. The more engagement you get, the more impressions your post will earn not just from your friends, but from your friends’ friends. This expands your network.

However, don’t post the same thing over and over again. It’ll come across as spam to your followers, and it’ll also look lazy if someone lands on your page and see the same piece of content repeated on your news feed.

Facebook is best if you are consistently sharing a variety of content related to your channel.

This does not mean you have to be creating them all. If you were to post five times a week, perhaps only one of the post can be originally created by you. Curate content (i.e. blog, infographics, podcasts, images) that matches your audience’s interest. By always having engaging content that your fans are eager to like, share, and comment, this will give your videos more exposure when it is time to share it.

Pro Tip: Save time by scheduling your Facebook content ahead of time. By batching your Facebook content to be uploaded in one sitting, you can have a week to a month of content prepped ahead of time, so you can go back to focusing on YouTube.

Managing Facebook as a channel to build your YouTube audience can be very effective, but it is a lot of work in itself.

Managing Facebook involves:

- Posting content

- Responding to comments

- Engaging with Facebook groups

- Tube Ritual (Video Marketing YouTube Group)

- Beauty and the Vlog (Fashion and Beauty YouTube Group)

- Travel Vloggers United (Travel YouTube Group)

- Evaluating performance repeatedly

Don’t spread yourself too thin. If YouTube is your priority, all other social media communities should be complementary, not an obligation.

Part 3: Twitter for YouTube Channel Marketing

Unlike Facebook or Instagram, Twitter is a platform where you must be ready with a large amount of valuable content to share, otherwise, you will be lost in the noise. Don’t be afraid to tweet similar content throughout a day. As long as it is done well and isn’t misleading viewers, it wouldn’t be considered spam.

Twitter allows you to get in front of some of the most influential people on the Internet and stay on top of global trends. It is not always easy to get noticed on Twitter, but when your content really resonates, it’s also hard to be ignored.

1. Take Advantage of Trending Hashtags

In order to be successful on Twitter, you must be ready to jump onto a relevant trend. If you are talking about something that nobody is interested in, you might not be heard at all. Keep an eye on the most popular hashtags for that day and get involved with a conversation.

While you should definitely tweet and gain engagement for your YouTube videos, you will also need to tweet out other content.

Constantly keeping an eye on what the world is talking about gives you an idea of what is important to discuss. This may even help guide your next YouTube video.

2. Tag Brands and Influencers

Twitter is a great platform if your channel showcases brands, personalities, or influencers because it gives you the ability to get in front of them. Getting a big brand or an influencer to share your video can earn you a lot more Twitter followers as well as a lot more views to your channel.

An effective way for YouTubers to use Twitter is to be active during an event. If you know that the event will get a lot of attention and the content you are producing is relevant to that audience, then use the official hashtag, tag an attendee, and get that crowd who are actively engaged during the duration of the event to view your videos.

Creators sharing their thoughts on #VidCon

Connecting with people with a lot of clouts can increase your credibility on the topic you are covering.

However, in order for these high-influence people to notice your YouTube channel via Twitter, you must commit to building your Twitter account and audience.

If your Twitter account looks amateurish, for example: if you display picture is still an egg, then any attempts at reaching out to these big brands and influencers will be a loss. Stay active and over time you will gain a following to support you.

Part 4: Reddit for YouTube Channel Marketing

Reddit for YouTube creators can be an intimidating place. Reddit users (Redditors) can sniff out marketing material or misleading click-baits.

You can commit this sin on other platform and get away with it, but on Reddit, this type of posting at best will not be ignored and at worst roasted alive in front of the whole platform.

Because of the anonymity of Reddit’s user base, the comments for posts are often unfiltered.

1. Good Content Gets Seen and Discussed On Reddit

If you can tap into the community values of Reddit, contribute to conversations and share interesting and relevant content there might not be a better platform to grow your YouTube audience.

Many media organizations with a significant following are starting to use Reddit to find stories and viral content . The chances of being discovered on Reddit is much higher than on Twitter, as the upvote/downvote system gives your good work a higher platform to stand on while lowering the bad content to Reddit’s cellar.

2. Don’t Promote Yourself

Reddit is not a platform where you enter, drop your content in, and expect people to engage with it. For Redditors, this is intrusive and unappreciated.

Imagine being at a party and talking to your friends, and then someone you don’t know comes in and starts a conversation about the latest movie, singing a song and asking for feedback, or discussing the coolest restaurants in town. That would be annoying, right?

You cannot go into Reddit blasting your content, because it wasn’t welcomed content.

Before you can get people on Reddit to care about your YouTube channel, you must show them that you care about them — the community.

From day one, you need to be a part of the community, and your reason for being a part of the community cannot be because you want to share content. If you have a hidden agenda, you will be discovered.

3. Understand the Reddiquettes

When engaging on Reddit, you must abide by rules which are called “reddiquette.” There are global reddiquettes and then there are individual community reddiquette.

Global reddiquettes:

- Search for duplicate content before posting.

- Consume the content before voting.

- Act as you would in real life.

- And more.

3. Community reddiquettes

These are additional rules that the individual Reddit communities enforce. Be sure to read these rules before posting onto these specific communities. Understanding these rules will help you understand the purpose of this community.

Here is an example of reddiquettes for r/Cameras:

You only have so many strikes with Reddit before your account gets banned. But don’t worry about all that. Be your awesome self.

When you are on Reddit, don’t think of yourself as a YouTuber, think of yourself as a redditor, if you do, you’ll have a bright future on the platform.

4. Subreddits Where You Can Post Freely

While there are some subreddits that demand relevant content, some subreddits will allow you post your videos as long as 90% of your content are from another source aside from your YouTube channel, you won’t be considered spammy.

- r/YouTuber: Get critiques for your videos

- r/Videos: Post any video into the masses

- r/YTPL: Share a whole playlist

Because these subreddits are unfocused and loaded with a variety of content, it’s often tricky to find your specific audience there. Then again, you’ll never know.

Part 5: Snapchat for YouTube Channel Marketing

If your audience craves immediacy and exclusivity, then Snapchat is definitely the social media channel that you’d want to explore.

The ephemeral nature of Snapchat makes it a unique way of marketing your content as what you snap will only be available within 24 hours. Because what you post will only be available for a brief moment in time, those who are following you will dedicate their attention to your content knowing that if they miss it, they might never see it again.

This undivided attention cannot be recreated on Twitter, Facebook, or Reddit, as users can easily scroll pass your content.

The key is to get your audience a personalized experience on your Snapchat. What can you offer on Snapchat that they can’t get elsewhere?

1. Don’t Worry About Professionalism

Snapchat is young, fun, and silly. On Snapchat, your personality needs to be the fuel for your content.

Pull the curtains open and welcome your audience through the private window into your life. Treat your Snapchat audience less as a faceless crowd but as your friends and family. Take them on a private tour, show them unseen footage of your video, and don’t be afraid to use the filters, text, and theme to liven up your content.

Start following some popular YouTubers on Snapchat and you can quickly see how they are using it. Don’t use Snapchat as a place to perform, but instead a place for you to be spontaneous. Remember these content don’t last forever, so don’t take forever planning it out, just start doing it.

Promoting your Snapchat account can be hard if you are not a celebrity. Unlike Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram, there is no in-app discovery or suggested users feature in Snapchat. The user will have to search for who they want to follow. Unless someone already knows about you, it’s unlikely that they will be following you on Snapchat. This makes promoting your account to your viewers essential for growth.

YouTuber, Markiplier tweeting his Snapchat username.

Here are a few quick tips for promoting your Snapchat account.

- Make sure your Snapchat handle is present on your YouTube channel and other social media platforms.

- Make yourSnapchat snapcode your profile pic, so people can scan and connect with you.

- Get other Snapchatters to give you a shout-out on their account.

Marketing on social media is essential for not only growing your YouTube channel but your entire brand. If you like more content around social media marketing for your channel, join our community of YouTubers where we are always discussing new tactics and opportunities.

Is there a social media platform that you want to test out but not sure how? Leave a comment below.

Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett is a writer and a lover of all things video.

Follow @Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett

Oct 26, 2023• Proven solutions

0

After uploading your video on YouTube, you may want to sit back and enjoy the massive uptick of views and subscribers. However, until you have established a big following on YouTube, only a few people are going to see your freshly published video… unless you share on social media.

So don’t relax yet, it’s time to spread the word about your video and channel on social media, such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, and Reddit.

Why is social media the best place to share your YouTube video? Let’s take a quick look at the statistics of some of the biggest social platforms in the world:

- Facebook has over 2.1 billion monthly active users.

- Instagram has approximately 800 million monthly active users.

- Twitter has approximately 330 million monthly active users.

- Reddit has approximately 330 million monthly active users.

- Snapchat has approximately 200 million monthly active users.

While your loyal viewers might watch your videos on YouTube, YouTube might not be the platform they spend the most time on.

Start by understanding your audience. If your YouTube channel is discussing fan theories for a popular television show, then Twitter and Reddit should be where you direct your efforts. If you are creating video content that has a lot of visual appeal, like travel or photography, then Instagram and Snapchat are better for cross-promotional content.

By promoting on the right social platform, there’s a better chance of discoverability. Additionally, branding that is consistent across all social media increases the trust among your viewers. Consistency does not mean simply putting the YouTube video onto Instagram or sharing it on Facebook.

Content is not one-size fits all!

Regardless of what platform your viewers are spending most of their time on, it’s important to understand how the community interacts. Sharing your video content on Facebook is different than on Reddit. What may be okay on one platform may come across as spam in another.

In this post, we will go through the best practices of sharing and engaging with your audience on 5 of the most popular social media channels.

Table of Content:

1. Instagram
2. Facebook
3. Twitter
4. Reddit
5. Snapchat

Part 1: Instagram for YouTube Channel Marketing

There is a lot of content today and therefore, audiences are more selective about how they choose to spend their time.

Take this example: Before you go to the theater to watch a movie, you might see a poster or a trailer first.

A movie poster lets you know this movie is coming to theatres and the trailer gives you a taste of what to expect before you buy the ticket and sit in the theater for two hours. If the promotional materials don’t entice, you wouldn’t go see the movie.

Instagram can work much in the same way for your YouTube channel. Your Instagram account can be a platform for attracting new viewers and hyping up your loyal following.

1. Using Bite-sized Snackable Content on Instagram

Images and one-minute long videos can engage with your users, help them work up an appetite for your videos, and direct them to your YouTube channel for more.

The great thing about Instagram — compared to YouTube — is that it’s easier to produce content for Instagram every day without exhausting your resources.

Be thinking about what you can post on to Instagram while you work on your YouTube video. You want a really attractive image or short video, which can be something you capture as you work on your long-form video: short preview or behind the scenes footage.

2. Share Your Life

Instagram allows you to consistently post content from your life. This allows you to connect with your audience as they discover more about you, so when it comes time for the YouTube video, they feel that have an established relationship with you.

They see your picture or video on their feed every day after all. You and your followers are practically friends.

While Instagram has multiple ways you can post onto the platform, we will talk about two very different strategies:

How YouTubers Should Post on Instagram Feed

When you post an image or a video onto Instagram directly it will be on your timeline and acts as a tile for your whole Instagram feed page. This piece of content will stay on your page forever, or until you delete it.

Like your YouTube videos, the content you post to your Instagram directly should have a cohesive theme that matches your branding. Keep an eye on your: -

- Aesthetic

- Caption

- Filter

As Instagram has grown in popularity, a lot of tools have been developed to help creators like yourself. Here are a few apps that you can include in your kit:

- VSCO: A photo editor app that will allow you to clean up and enhance details to really make your visuals pop.

- UNUM: An Instagram planner app that enables you to visualize and pre-plan your post.

- Later: A scheduling tool you can use to auto-publish to directly to Instagram.

- Planoly: Drag and drop scheduler and planner, allows you to see the whole grid before posting.

Here’s Liza Koshy’s Instagram feed. As you can see, she has a clear style and also a variety of content. If you haven’t heard of Liza Koshy and found her through Instagram, you get curious: “What does she do?” Instagram is fantastic for building intrigue and garnering interest.

Instagram: Liza Koshy

This will be a good place to post a teaser of your latest video, upload an inspiring image, or share an interesting piece of content that shows the world what you are all about.

Have a different type of content lined up. You don’t want someone to end up on your Instagram page and only see selfies or inspiring quotes.

You won’t know which type of content will hook your next fan… so experiment.

When you post onto Instagram directly, you can’t add a are unable to link in the caption. This has been a bane for marketers and creators since the beginning of Instagram.

Instagram: Pointless Blog

While Instagram is a great engagement platform, it hasn’t been the best channel for those who want to have a direct call to action. The old method was to direct the viewer to your Instagram bio where there is the only place to post a link.

However, once you’ve gained a large following (10K) you will be able to attached links in Instagram Story.

2. How YouTubers Should on Post Instagram Story

Instagram Story allows you to post a series of images and videos over the course of 24 hours. After that, the collection of content — or “story” — from that day disappears.

1. Don’t want your Instagram Story to disappear forever?

There is a feature called “Highlight” which archives your stories so that you can view them later, however, they will be kept on your Instagram profile page. This allows visitors to see your best stories and have prepared content even when you go 24 hours without posting something new.

Instagram: Marianna Hewitt

2. Use Instagram Story to Make an Announcement

While you are uploading your latest video to YouTube, go on Instagram Story and let your followers know.

Unlike posting directly to the Instagram timeline, once you reach a certain milestone, Instagram Story allows you to create a link right in the content. The ability to offer something timely and encourage the viewer to swipe up is a fantastic way to catch your audience when they are most interested in your content. By doing so, you redirect them from Instagram to your YouTube video.

Instagram: Jenn Im

Don’t think of Instagram Story as simply a mean for promoting your video, but a chance to give your loyal viewers an exclusive view into your process, allow them to get familiar with your personality and increase the exposure of your brand as a whole, solidifying your relationship.

Part 2: Facebook for YouTube Channel Marketing

Facebook is the world’s most popular social media platform. With that claim, it can help any new YouTuber find and grow their audience. It doesn’t matter if their channel is about fashion or karate, Facebook is an appropriate platform for interacting with the audience, as long as the content you share is relevant and click-worthy.

There are a number of ways to share content on Facebook:

- Sharing on your own personal timeline allows your Friends to see the content.

- Sharing directly to a particular group or person’s feed assures those in the group or that specific person will see the content.

- Sharing via a separate Page you’ve built for your YouTube channel allows those who are following the page to see the content.

1. Improve YouTube Video Thumbnail on Facebook

Facebook doesn’t make it easy for YouTubers to show their video on Facebook’s news feed, especially if it is hosted on YouTube.

When you post your video from YouTube directly to Facebook, it’ll look something like the image above. Unremarkable. While your audience can still view the video on the Facebook timeline, your fans scrolling by wouldn’t even notice it.

This is Facebook’s way of encouraging you to post videos directly to Facebook’s platform. Which is something you should consider as well, but as you are currently working to grow your YouTube channel, it’s good to focus on this task first.

Well, how do you make the post look better? There is a tool calledThumb Tube that gives you full sized image on Facebook:

Thumb Tube takes your YouTube video link and redirects it so it is now hosted on ThumbTube.com. Yet, anyone viewing the video there is watching on YouTube, not Facebook. This allows you to still capture all the views, likes, and comments on YouTube.

1. Managing a Facebook Page for Your YouTube Channel

Know this, Facebook has been around for over a decade, and establishing yourself on the social network in 2018 is not what it was like in the late ‘00s. Hard truths: building a following from scratch is going to be a lot of work.

1. Growing on Facebook is Hard

Before you go and start committing yourself to Facebook, consider your capacity and your audience: are you able to dedicate time and effort on Facebook? Is this the best platform to reach your viewers?

So Facebook is for you. How should you approach it?

2. Setup a Facebook Page for your YouTube Channel

This separates your personal account from your channel, allowing you to still have some autonomy. You don’t necessarily want your fans to be your friends… On top of that, having a separate page for your channel enables you to keep a consistent branding, which is important in getting more likes and subscribers.

To set up a separate Facebook Page:

1. Go to Facebook, and click “Pages” in the right-hand column

1. Click “Create Pages”
2. Let Facebook know whether your Page will be classified as a “Business or Brand” or a “Community or Public Figure”

1. Name your Page, preferably your YouTube channel name
2. Add Profile and Cover pictures
3. INVITE!

Treat your Facebook Page like another homepage for your channel. Landing on your page might be the first interaction the audience will have with your brand, so it is important that it is similar to your YouTube channel. This means, the logo has to match, the descriptions need to be aligned, and the cover photo should somewhat resemble your YouTube channel art.

Once you are confident that all the Facebook elements are consistent, it’s time to start marketing.

3. Invite Your Facebook Friends to Like Your Page

Your circle of friends will give you your initial burst needed to grow your YouTube channel, as they like and comment on your videos. The more engagement you get, the more impressions your post will earn not just from your friends, but from your friends’ friends. This expands your network.

However, don’t post the same thing over and over again. It’ll come across as spam to your followers, and it’ll also look lazy if someone lands on your page and see the same piece of content repeated on your news feed.

Facebook is best if you are consistently sharing a variety of content related to your channel.

This does not mean you have to be creating them all. If you were to post five times a week, perhaps only one of the post can be originally created by you. Curate content (i.e. blog, infographics, podcasts, images) that matches your audience’s interest. By always having engaging content that your fans are eager to like, share, and comment, this will give your videos more exposure when it is time to share it.

Pro Tip: Save time by scheduling your Facebook content ahead of time. By batching your Facebook content to be uploaded in one sitting, you can have a week to a month of content prepped ahead of time, so you can go back to focusing on YouTube.

Managing Facebook as a channel to build your YouTube audience can be very effective, but it is a lot of work in itself.

Managing Facebook involves:

- Posting content

- Responding to comments

- Engaging with Facebook groups

- Tube Ritual (Video Marketing YouTube Group)

- Beauty and the Vlog (Fashion and Beauty YouTube Group)

- Travel Vloggers United (Travel YouTube Group)

- Evaluating performance repeatedly

Don’t spread yourself too thin. If YouTube is your priority, all other social media communities should be complementary, not an obligation.

Part 3: Twitter for YouTube Channel Marketing

Unlike Facebook or Instagram, Twitter is a platform where you must be ready with a large amount of valuable content to share, otherwise, you will be lost in the noise. Don’t be afraid to tweet similar content throughout a day. As long as it is done well and isn’t misleading viewers, it wouldn’t be considered spam.

Twitter allows you to get in front of some of the most influential people on the Internet and stay on top of global trends. It is not always easy to get noticed on Twitter, but when your content really resonates, it’s also hard to be ignored.

1. Take Advantage of Trending Hashtags

In order to be successful on Twitter, you must be ready to jump onto a relevant trend. If you are talking about something that nobody is interested in, you might not be heard at all. Keep an eye on the most popular hashtags for that day and get involved with a conversation.

While you should definitely tweet and gain engagement for your YouTube videos, you will also need to tweet out other content.

Constantly keeping an eye on what the world is talking about gives you an idea of what is important to discuss. This may even help guide your next YouTube video.

2. Tag Brands and Influencers

Twitter is a great platform if your channel showcases brands, personalities, or influencers because it gives you the ability to get in front of them. Getting a big brand or an influencer to share your video can earn you a lot more Twitter followers as well as a lot more views to your channel.

An effective way for YouTubers to use Twitter is to be active during an event. If you know that the event will get a lot of attention and the content you are producing is relevant to that audience, then use the official hashtag, tag an attendee, and get that crowd who are actively engaged during the duration of the event to view your videos.

Creators sharing their thoughts on #VidCon

Connecting with people with a lot of clouts can increase your credibility on the topic you are covering.

However, in order for these high-influence people to notice your YouTube channel via Twitter, you must commit to building your Twitter account and audience.

If your Twitter account looks amateurish, for example: if you display picture is still an egg, then any attempts at reaching out to these big brands and influencers will be a loss. Stay active and over time you will gain a following to support you.

Part 4: Reddit for YouTube Channel Marketing

Reddit for YouTube creators can be an intimidating place. Reddit users (Redditors) can sniff out marketing material or misleading click-baits.

You can commit this sin on other platform and get away with it, but on Reddit, this type of posting at best will not be ignored and at worst roasted alive in front of the whole platform.

Because of the anonymity of Reddit’s user base, the comments for posts are often unfiltered.

1. Good Content Gets Seen and Discussed On Reddit

If you can tap into the community values of Reddit, contribute to conversations and share interesting and relevant content there might not be a better platform to grow your YouTube audience.

Many media organizations with a significant following are starting to use Reddit to find stories and viral content . The chances of being discovered on Reddit is much higher than on Twitter, as the upvote/downvote system gives your good work a higher platform to stand on while lowering the bad content to Reddit’s cellar.

2. Don’t Promote Yourself

Reddit is not a platform where you enter, drop your content in, and expect people to engage with it. For Redditors, this is intrusive and unappreciated.

Imagine being at a party and talking to your friends, and then someone you don’t know comes in and starts a conversation about the latest movie, singing a song and asking for feedback, or discussing the coolest restaurants in town. That would be annoying, right?

You cannot go into Reddit blasting your content, because it wasn’t welcomed content.

Before you can get people on Reddit to care about your YouTube channel, you must show them that you care about them — the community.

From day one, you need to be a part of the community, and your reason for being a part of the community cannot be because you want to share content. If you have a hidden agenda, you will be discovered.

3. Understand the Reddiquettes

When engaging on Reddit, you must abide by rules which are called “reddiquette.” There are global reddiquettes and then there are individual community reddiquette.

Global reddiquettes:

- Search for duplicate content before posting.

- Consume the content before voting.

- Act as you would in real life.

- And more.

3. Community reddiquettes

These are additional rules that the individual Reddit communities enforce. Be sure to read these rules before posting onto these specific communities. Understanding these rules will help you understand the purpose of this community.

Here is an example of reddiquettes for r/Cameras:

You only have so many strikes with Reddit before your account gets banned. But don’t worry about all that. Be your awesome self.

When you are on Reddit, don’t think of yourself as a YouTuber, think of yourself as a redditor, if you do, you’ll have a bright future on the platform.

4. Subreddits Where You Can Post Freely

While there are some subreddits that demand relevant content, some subreddits will allow you post your videos as long as 90% of your content are from another source aside from your YouTube channel, you won’t be considered spammy.

- r/YouTuber: Get critiques for your videos

- r/Videos: Post any video into the masses

- r/YTPL: Share a whole playlist

Because these subreddits are unfocused and loaded with a variety of content, it’s often tricky to find your specific audience there. Then again, you’ll never know.

Part 5: Snapchat for YouTube Channel Marketing

If your audience craves immediacy and exclusivity, then Snapchat is definitely the social media channel that you’d want to explore.

The ephemeral nature of Snapchat makes it a unique way of marketing your content as what you snap will only be available within 24 hours. Because what you post will only be available for a brief moment in time, those who are following you will dedicate their attention to your content knowing that if they miss it, they might never see it again.

This undivided attention cannot be recreated on Twitter, Facebook, or Reddit, as users can easily scroll pass your content.

The key is to get your audience a personalized experience on your Snapchat. What can you offer on Snapchat that they can’t get elsewhere?

1. Don’t Worry About Professionalism

Snapchat is young, fun, and silly. On Snapchat, your personality needs to be the fuel for your content.

Pull the curtains open and welcome your audience through the private window into your life. Treat your Snapchat audience less as a faceless crowd but as your friends and family. Take them on a private tour, show them unseen footage of your video, and don’t be afraid to use the filters, text, and theme to liven up your content.

Start following some popular YouTubers on Snapchat and you can quickly see how they are using it. Don’t use Snapchat as a place to perform, but instead a place for you to be spontaneous. Remember these content don’t last forever, so don’t take forever planning it out, just start doing it.

Promoting your Snapchat account can be hard if you are not a celebrity. Unlike Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram, there is no in-app discovery or suggested users feature in Snapchat. The user will have to search for who they want to follow. Unless someone already knows about you, it’s unlikely that they will be following you on Snapchat. This makes promoting your account to your viewers essential for growth.

YouTuber, Markiplier tweeting his Snapchat username.

Here are a few quick tips for promoting your Snapchat account.

- Make sure your Snapchat handle is present on your YouTube channel and other social media platforms.

- Make yourSnapchat snapcode your profile pic, so people can scan and connect with you.

- Get other Snapchatters to give you a shout-out on their account.

Marketing on social media is essential for not only growing your YouTube channel but your entire brand. If you like more content around social media marketing for your channel, join our community of YouTubers where we are always discussing new tactics and opportunities.

Is there a social media platform that you want to test out but not sure how? Leave a comment below.

Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett is a writer and a lover of all things video.

Follow @Richard Bennett