How to make a playlist on YouTube
27.01.21
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Ultimate Guide: Music Playlist
How to make a YouTube playlist in particular a YouTube music playlist is more than just selecting videos and putting them together. Whilst you need to obviously know the basic steps, creating a playlist that people will actually follow and share requires a little more knowledge. The following article will show you how to make a playlist, optimise it and curate effectively.
How to create a YouTube Playlist
Technically creating your own playlist on YouTube is a straightforward process. The following video clearly and concisely explains those steps. However, more importantly it also discusses a CRUCIAL step most YouTubers miss, and that is how to make your playlist rank in search. Watch the whole video and you’ll be creating SEO friendly playlists from your own content and other peoples in no time.
How to curate a YouTube Music Playlist
The above video covers the technical side of making a YouTube playlist, however when it comes to music there is one further step that needs to be considered, how to select the right music for your playlist.
These days it’s so easy to create a playlist that you can simply find some music and click add to playlist, which is fine if it’s for personal use only. However if you are trying to create something that other people may follow, then you want to consider the following before clicking that add button.
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Purpose of playlist
Who are you wanting to listen to and follow your playlist. For example, are you trying to create a popular playlist so that you can share your own or your label’s music more effectively? If so research your potential audience. What artists do they generally listen to, what artwork seems to grab their attention and so on. Resist trying to shoehorn too many ideas into one playlist. The most popular playlists are very self explanatory eg ‘Massive Dance Hits’.
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Consistency of selections
Leading on from the point above, keep the message simple. If it’s meant to be a banging party mix dont stick a downtempo track in because you like it. Work hard at perfecting your selections, take pride in it, much like a great DJ takes pride in planning their set.
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Don’t try and be to clever
This is the biggest mistake most people make. Unless you’re already a well known brand like ‘Defected Records’ dont name your playlist after yourself, your label or some quirky humours title. Why? Because it is very unlikely someone is going to search for ‘Jon’s Favourite lockdown Jams’. Instead as the video above discusses, do some keyword research. It doesn’t need to be complicated, a good place to start is find popular related playlists and make a note of what terms they are using. If you still desperately want your own unique name then put it after the key search term eg ‘Massive Dance Hits – Jon’s Favourite Lockdown Jams’.
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Be ruthless
And finally be ruthless. If the track doesn’t quite fit or jars when listening back to your playlist, remove it. Nothing worse than a playlist that suddenly goes off on a random tangent or has bad music in it. We regularly listen back to our playlists and tweak.
Conclusion – How to make a playlist on YouTube
In summary if you are hoping to create a playlist that people might follow you need to be consistent, use the correct keywords, know your target audience and most importantly select great music.
Track Submission – If you’d like to submit a track for potential inclusion please head to Submit Hub and search Blah Blah Blah in the curators section. Thanks BBB.
