How to Promote Music on YouTube With Riffs and a Phone Camera

Two stats were released in January, and they tell different stories.

According to Luminate’s year-end report, 106,000 new songs were uploaded to streaming services every day, adding to a catalog that is currently 253 million songs long. Of all the songs that exist right now, 88% received less than 1,000 plays in total during 2025. Not 1,000 plays in one month, but in an entire year.

Then came the letter from YouTube’s CEO in the same month. It stated that Shorts gets around 200 billion views daily.

One platform has a supply problem. The other has a demand problem. Songs on a streaming service disappear; a short riff is added to a stream that consumes 200 billion views every day.

Record the 20 seconds, not the whole song

Guitarists want to record the whole song. Nobody watches the whole song.

Record the part that got you interested in the song. The Cowboys From Hell introduction. The low-C riff under the second chorus. The section where a seven-string finally makes sense. Record 20 seconds, one take, phone propped against something on your desk. Focus on the fretting hand because nobody watches a guitar video to see your face.

If you’ve got a full song already recorded, you’ll find three shorts within it.

Name your video according to what people actually search for

“Riff Idea #4 🤘” will be found by no one. No one searches for that.

“What tuning is Cowboys From Hell in?” answers a question that people search for every single day. Search for the top results of the guitar blogs that you read regularly: Tuning Questions, Scale Questions, Gear Comparison. Put one in your title. Answer that question in the first three seconds of your video. And let SEO do the heavy lifting on that video when the feed doesn’t want to show it to anyone yet, since you have 40 subscribers.

Real hands are rare

According to the same letter, over a million channels were using YouTube’s built-in AI tools every day in December.

So there are millions of videos in the feed that weren’t filmed by actual people. This changes what qualifies as “good.” A video of someone actually playing something challenging, without editing out a missed note, is valuable. Show your tuner. Show a failed take, then show the next take.

The comment section is the part of a video that gets ignored

A video with 3,000 views and no comments means to any new viewer that 3,000 people watched the video and had nothing to say. Low views look like a fresh video. No comments look like a rejection.

Engage in the comments section. Write a question in the comments that includes an opinion: “Do you think it’s Drop C or Drop C#? Has everyone been copying the wrong tab for years?” Pin your comment and respond to every single comment within the first 50 comments.

Or, if you’d rather start the conversation than wait for it, spend a few dollars here. You can purchase YouTube comments, 25 at a time, for the cost of a cup of coffee. You write the comments so they sound like a guitarist and not like a salesperson. Delivery isn’t instantaneous; it takes 1-3 days. What you pay for is more important than the price. Look for comments from real accounts, not bots. Look for a vendor that asks for your video link, not your login credentials. Purchasing marketing is acceptable. Giving away your account information, or getting hundreds of comments posted in the same minute, are the reasons channels get deleted.

Free is available, too. Take a Sunday and comment on 10 guitar videos in your niche. Don’t say, “Nice playing!” Comment on something that a non-guitarist wouldn’t notice.

What to check after 90 days

Upload one video per week, on the same day, even if it isn’t perfect. After 90 days, look at the retention graph, not the subscriber count.

Locate the lowest point in the graph for your most popular video. Watch that segment of the video. Nine times out of 10, you’ll see a lengthy introduction, a discussion on tuning that lasts too long, or a riff being played before your camera finishes adjusting. Fix that issue in your next video.

Look at which video resulted in a new subscriber, not a new view. Usually, it’s a different video. Make that video again.