Anthony Fantano has a YouTube channel called The Needle Drop. There, he reviews albums and songs and brings an old chart to a new medium.
Daughters, a noise rock band based in Rhode Island, had an unexpected breakthrough a couple of years ago. This happened due to a baldhead online enthusiast.
The rock band had then just released their new album after eight years. True enough, their music’s punishing heaviness did not fit a wide variety of audiences. But despite this fact, Daughters’ tour was able to sell out.
Jon Syverson, the band’s drummer who was 39 back then, recalled that their music label noticed a sudden surge in sales and streams of their song. His cousin, who was half his age, excitedly tried to explain to him the reason for the sudden spike in attention. According to the teenager, The Melon reviewed Daughters’ album, wore the yellow flannel, and scored 10/10.
The band’s drummer did not have a single ounce of an idea about what his cousin was talking about back then. However, to a specific subset of young music fans, the band might have hit the jackpot.
The Man Behind Daughters Sudden Popularity
The influential man in question who caused Daughters’ sudden popularity is the YouTuber who banned Anthony Fantano. This 34-year-old YouTuber has been speaking about albums and song reviews directly before the camera for more than 10 years. Moreover, his channel is called The Needle Drop.
The channel already has 2.26 million subscribers, making Anthony probably the most famous music critic today.
Fantano has uploaded thousands of videos across several platforms. This includes his recent partnership with Twitch, a live streaming platform owned by Amazon. Through these platforms and videos, Fantano has built up a league of followers and imitators. They trade in nicknames, Easter eggs, and inside jokes. For instance, Melon, which was mentioned a while ago, indicates the critic’s pale dome—on the other hand, wearing a yellow flannel shirt signals a rave. Lastly, wearing a red flannel shirt means a pan.
A record review is a form of art that’s already insular and endangered. Fantano and his channel have successfully helped push this art form to a new medium and younger audience.
Growing YouTube Views from Niche YouTube Music Scenes
YouTube has tons of views and videos that review almost everything, such as food and sports. However, there is no denying that Fantano was able to put himself at the very front of a continuously growing wave of reaction and review videos. These niches frequently buy YouTube views to get their opinion shared widely on the platform.
Fantano took his early cues from his favorite gaming vloggers and the start-up wine critic who is now an entrepreneur Dary Vaynerchuk. Besides these, he also got inspiration from the politics and philosophy debaters and monologuists that were vital in defining his aesthetic as a YouTuber. This allowed him to become probably the top music critic on YouTube today.
Yet, many individuals were able to build what we can consider as an independent one-person empire. This is similar to what Fantano has in his suburban home in Connecticut. This YouTuber slash music critic has merchandise, a generous pool of Patreon subscribers, live appearances, and endless videos about his videos.
What’s More Important for Musicians Online: Views or Plays?
The media climate is struggling today. The music magazine landscape has already decimated, and veteran bloggers are now scraping to get by. In addition, survivors such as Pitchfork and Rolling Stone are struggling to keep up with corporate overlords. For these reasons, Fantano’s DIY bedroom model feels like the future.
Fantano said that he is aware that a lot of his craft is now influenced by his style, aesthetic, and delivery. He was not the first to bring articulate-rant treatment to music on YouTube. However, he noted that he was meticulous when it came to crafting his channel. He also has a severe approach to learning about his competitors, including websites that still rely on the written word, keeping his simple, communal, and intimate approach.
Furthermore, Fantano emphasized that he had been eating, sleeping, and bleeding YouTube for a very long time now. He added that unconsciously, he had opted for something that he found uncomplicated. His reason is that he envisioned the way he makes up and delivers his content as something easy to copy. Through this, other people would be able to get it on the conversation.
Fantano was Able to Prove His Point Through a Video for Views
Recently, Fantano published a video on the social media platform Twitter that seemed to prove his point. The video features a child reviewing the rapper 6ix9ine’s new album. The child had a preternatural bluster that was modeled on his own. The 11-year-old child in the video, Lucas, said that he spent hours a day watching Fantano and other music reviewers like Shawn Cee for years. These YouTubers inspired him to build a bare-bones basement setup and start his own YouTube channel amid the global COVID-19 pandemic.
Lucas also said that his parents are aware of what he is doing. They even know that the 11-year-old YouTuber will be a big one someday. He added that he was delighted to have been noticed by one of his heroes. His channel also gained some 1,000 subscribers from his shoutout. Furthermore, Lucas noted that many people are telling him not to let his popularity go to his head.
Fantano now has more than 900,000 views across his YouTube accounts. He serves as an entertainer along with being a music critic. Moreover, he became a touchstone among music-focused Gen Z and millennial video creators. This is because they refine and expand based on his format on other platforms such as TikTok.
Furthermore, Fantano noted that what is important to him is that the people who are doing what he is doing now are passionate and care for what they do.
YouTube Music: A New Way to Expand Your Music Experience
YouTube is a significantly colossal platform for video-sharing. But now, it is already offering a music streaming platform for everyone’s benefit.
A playlist is where people discover new music, share their favorite songs with friends, and create personal libraries of their most liked songs. Each piece that people listen to captures a mood or moment in time. This allows you to have the perfect soundtrack for your everyday life. YouTube is aware of this importance. For this reason, the video-sharing giant is working hard to enhance the way that people engage with playlists on YouTube.
There isn’t such a thing as a perfect playlist. So, YouTube is taking steps to improve people’s music experience within its platform. People who are new to YouTube Music will definitely benefit from this unique music experience. In addition, music discovery veterans and seasoned playlist makers will be able to make the most of playlists on YouTube Music.
YouTube’s New Product Features Features For Creating Playlists
Assistive playlists
There are times when you have a great playlist idea in mind. However, you do not know what songs you should add. But this will change, thanks to the new assistive playlist feature.
The new feature will suggest relevant songs based on signals like the playlist’s name, the songs it already has, and the user listening history. You will find up to seven suggestions when you are editing a playlist. If you want to have additional tips, you can tap on the Refresh button to get more. This feature applies to playlists that already have tracks as well as those that are newly created.
Collaborative playlists
Building a playlist with your friends is a great experience. YouTube knows this fact, so it added a collaborative feature to YouTube Music.
This feature lets you build a playlist and share it with other YouTube Music users. Just like YouTube’s collaboration experience, all the collaborators of a particular playlist can quickly sort, share, add, and edit the list.
Adding collaborators to your playlist is pretty straightforward. First, tap on the pencil icon to edit the playlist. Next, select Collaborate, and then the Collaborators can add songs and videos options. Lastly, invite collaborators to your playlist by sharing the link with them.
YouTube Music’s Profile Page Playlists
This feature is also for people who are looking for inspiration from other fans of music. Now, people can easily browse the public music playlists of other listeners, along with their uploaded music videos. This lets you further browse music collections from people who have similar music tastes to yours.
Looking for a sure’s profile page is easy. All you need to do is to click on the creator’s username on the playlist page.
Personalized Playlists for People Who Do Not Like Making Their Own
YouTube Music has a Mixed for You section. There, you can access the fantastic playlists that YouTube created for everyone.
Looking at your listening history, the tracks on these playlists are not only official audio tracks. In fact, there are also remixes and deep cuts of your favorite songs.
Moreover, here are the included features in the Mixed for You section:
New Release Mix
The new release mix features the most unique and most recent releases from your favorite artists and other similar musicians.
Discover Mix
This feature shows new artists or songs that YouTube Music thinks you will love. The platform updates its content weekly, so you can expect to find your next favorite artist on the playlist.
Your Mix
This one is updated continuously and is the fastest way to begin listening to your favorite music. In addition, the Your Mix section offers fun recommendations based on your listening habits.
Liked Songs
This allows you to see all the songs that you liked.
Youtube Music’s Mood & Genre Playlists
You will find thousands of programmed playlists when you navigate to the Explore tab. All tracks in this section match almost every mood. From Focus to Chill, programmed playlists gather music from across the expansive catalog of YouTube to provide listeners with the right music for their current mood.
In addition, YouTube Music offers branded genre playlists. Such playlists feature some of the most favorite artists all over YouTube.
These are some of Youtube Music’s latest and most excellent genre playlists:
The Hit List
As the name suggests, The Hit List is the playlist for the biggest hits of today.
Released
This playlist is home to the hottest and newest tracks of the week, which is refreshed every Friday.
On Everything
This houses the most recent and most popular Hip Hop tracks.
Al Millon
The playlist for the weekly top tracks in Latin music.
Country Hotlist
If you are a fan of Country hits, then this particular playlist is perfect for you. The Country Hotlist playlist is the home of the biggest country hits today.
There is a surge in the popularity of music streaming services. Apps like Spotify, iTunes, Apple Music, and SoundCloud have become more popular than ever. For this reason, the competition for more niche groups of music among these platforms has increased as well.
Final Takeaway
YouTube is well aware of this competition. In order to keep up, it took the game to a whole new level and created a music streaming platform that people could subscribe to. Furthermore, YouTube Music was born.
For $9.99 per month, you will be able to enjoy all the great music and features that YouTube Music has to offer.
Back then, YouTube was only a simple platform for videos. But people loved YouTube, causing it to become the largest video-sharing platform in the world. It has billions of active users every month and millions of hours of videos uploaded y users every day. Needless to say, there is no end to YouTube’s popularity.
But now that the video-sharing giant has taken another step to a whole new endeavor, it is for people to witness whether or not it will succeed.
Date: October 8, 2021 / Categories: News, / Author: Joy P
