Growing Your Global Audience

Expand your global audience and connect with fans across the world on YouTube.

Jump to Global Strategy Best Practices

Unlock YouTube’s Global Stage

From fans of viral hits to loyal superfans, a global audience is key to taking your music’s reach worldwide.

Developing a thoughtful global strategy can help your music reach fans regardless of language, culture, or location.

YouTube gives you access to global audiences, adding potential consumption and creation with your music.

Over 125 million Music & Premium subscribers*

Over 500 billion music video views  a year*

Over 3.2 million songs used from over 750K artists in Shorts*

The Value of Going Global

As you continue to grow your audience in your home country, there’s opportunity to build new audiences in others. Growing your international presence can:

Help your music reach a larger audience

Find fans in new markets

Unlock new opportunities in other countries

Touring, publicity, collaborations

Create new monetization opportunities

Merch sales, fan funding

When to consider a global strategy

While you can grow your global audience at any time, some key moments to consider  include when:

You have a new, upcoming release with specific markets in mind

Your song starts to trend and audiences in new markets start to grow

You have a tour and want to engage certain market

Getting started: Identify top markets

The first step in planning your global strategy is understanding your music's current audience. From there,
you can prioritize top audience markets, which can have high value and potential.

Gain deep insights into your audience, both broadly and for specific songs or videos, using
the Audience tab and Advanced mode in Analytics for Artists.

Top channel markets

In Analytics for Artists, go to the
Audience tab → Top geographies

Click 'See more' for advanced analytics.

Top song markets

Go to the Content tab → Click Songs → Select the song title in your top songs → Click Audience → Look at Top geographies

Monitor audience growth

Take it a step further: Keep an eye on your top markets and songs that they're connecting with most over time

Take it a step further: To see the most popular songs within your top market(s), go to the
Content tab → Click Songs → Click 'See more' under your top songs → Filter → Geography → Select your top market(s).

Think internationally with your content

As you think about your global strategy, it's important to be clear on what your intentions are when expanding your global audience. Ask yourself whether your goal is to:

ERIK joined a popular, global trend and put his own spin on it to reach a broader audience.

Expand to a broader audience

Think of broad, universal concepts that could appeal or relate to a general audience

What this can look like:

Content that is not language-specific, with minimal text or dialogue
Adding your creative flair to popular, general Shorts trends or formats (like transitions, choreo, memes, etc.)
Collaborating with a variety of artists and creators from a range of markets

BRUNO MARS created a new song and Short to announce his anticipated return to Brazil for a tour.

Focus on a specific market

Tailor your content to fans in a specific market or incorporate popular content formats or trends from that market

What this can look like:

Immersing yourself in a culture
Directly addressing fans in a specific market
Creating content formats popular in a specific market
Collaborating with other artists or creators from a specific market

Global strategy best practices

Content strategy

Mitski - My Love Mine All Mine (Vietnamese Lyric Video)

MITSKI created translated lyric videos to cater to top markets discovering her song 'My Love Mine All Mine'.

Music fans around the world have unique listening habits. Tailor your tracks with clean versions, local remixes or translated lyrics to really resonate with your audience.

MOLIY created local remixes to further build her audience upon the success of her global, viral track 'Shake It To The Max (FLY)'.

Look out for songs that begin to trend in your region or abroad as new trends can take off anywhere at any time.

Trends present great timing and opportunities for you to broaden your reach while you have heightened attention on your music.

Content and channel optimization

Enhance discoverability of your videos by using translations in video titles and descriptions

YouTube automatically provides localised closed captions for content, but quality varies. We encourage you to review and edit incorrect captions

Tag Featured Artists — Please note: Collaborators will need to enable mentions, which can be managed in the 'Privacy' section of YouTube account settings.

Use Collaborations to cross-promote content with other international artists and creators. Add up to five collaborators to a video or Short, which will be shown to all channels' audiences.

Make it easy for international fans to find your content. Consider organising content by making a playlist for translations, content with international collaborations and more.

Just getting started? Try Promote.

Promote allows artists to boost their own videos and Shorts to achieve their channel and audience growth goals.

Set goals like audience growth (add subscribers), increase video views and increase website clicks.

Go to studio.youtube.com
Go to the Promotions tab and click '+ New promotion'
Tap the 'You' tab

Are you more familiar with Google Ads or wanting finer targeting control and more robust reporting? Explore YouTube Engagements and Google Ads.

YouTube Engagements are Demand Gen campaigns on Google Ads with a goal of growing YouTube subscriptions and follow-on views.

For more on how to set up music advertising campaigns in Google Ads, take a look at our Music advertising guide

Need help with your campaign?

Contact our 24/7 support team

General best practices

Leverage the insights on YouTube Music Charts for local music preferences and understand the unique characteristics of different music markets

Develop a global team to manage the logistics of international promotions and licensing deals.

Understand and recognise the challenges in new markets, such as cultural differences, the law and regulations and the competitive landscape.

Participate in global events. Music festivals and award shows around the world can provide valuable exposure for artists.

Global strategy thought starters

When developing your global strategy, consider the following before and during the campaign.

Is the content on my channel easily discoverable by an international audience?

Are the titles, descriptions and thumbnails of my videos and
channel banner clear and attractive to an international audience?
Have I translated my titles and descriptions?

Am I providing accurate and high-quality subtitles or translations in the languages that my international viewers understand?

Am I actively engaging with my international fans?

Am I replying to, pinning and liking their comments?
Have I featured fan creations or trends from other countries?