Kudos are YouTube Certified

The YouTube platform is probably the most complex of all our income streams. In order to ensure we are capable of giving labels the most informed advice on YouTube strategy, three of us from Kudos undertook in depth YouTube training at Google’s UK HQ. Having passed an exam at the end of this training, Kudos is now a “YouTube Certified” company.

You can find out more about the YouTube certified program here. 

YouTube has made the transition from being a discovery platform, where people check out new music, to a consumption platform in its own right. For a couple of years now we have been monetising UGC content (music on videos uploaded by 3rd parties) for our digitally distributed labels using Google’s Content ID  technology. Kudos now has active claims on over 89,000 UGC videos on behalf of distributed labels. These videos have been viewed 286 million times (1,250,000,000 minutes of youtube viewing!). YouTube analytics are always a little mind blowing!

Last February we launched our AVCD service for YouTube, enabling labels to deliver their whole catalogue (if they wish) direct to their own YouTube channel as pack-shot videos. We have now delivered over 8,000 fully tagged and premiumly monetised videos to 150+ label and artist channels.As you may have read, YouTube plans to launch an ad free subscription service in the new year. In order to take full advantage of this, we would encourage any label who is yet to partner their channel and deliver pack-shot videos to do so ASAP so it’s all ready at launch. In general, one of the core strategies to ensuring you receive the best possible return from YouTube is to try and move views from user uploaded pack-shot music videos to those on your own partnered channel.

As with any rapidly growing sector, quite a few “carpet baggers” have arrived in the “YouTube Content ID” space, trawling popular YouTube channels, touting for business. Most claim to be “the largest”, “the cheapest”. It’s worth pointing out that we charge the same fee for YouTube as we do for any other digital income stream, and that we are best placed to help you develop an overall YouTube strategy for both your own channel and your UGC claims. Content ID monetisation (which these companies really focus on) is the low hanging fruit. Optimisation requires looking at the bigger picture. Speak to your Kudos label manager for more information.