7 Actionable Tips to Record a Cover Song For YouTube! (2021)

In this post, I´m going to talk about how to record a cover song for YouTube and get discovered as an artist with seven simple yet effective tips.

Now, taking advantage of YouTube as a platform to get noticeability might sound great, and it actually IS, but the truth is that it also takes hard work.

So, without further ado, let´s start!

1. Get Creative!

There is a wrong and a right way to choose and make a song cover that you want to upload to YouTube.

One of the first things, actually, tends to be making the right choice whenever you think about making a song cover.

What do I mean by that?

Well, you should do some previous research and find if there´s something that you could ADD to the mix, meaning, that you can use a different style of cover from what´s seen out there.

Whether that means making an acapella cover, playing the ukelele or the piano instead of the guitar, or simply trying to deviate from what the original song sounds like, doing a reggae version of a pop song, for example.

The goal is to be creative with it, make it your own, try to incorporate your style to the song.

Offering a fresh version of the song, something different, by using your own artistic talents, IS what can make or break your YouTube success.

Like Conkarah does:

The bottom line?

Get creative, think of ways YOU can make a song sound like you want it to sound or feel.

2. Understand Fair Use

Okay then, the next thing you have to consider when covering songs for YouTube is to have a better understanding of HOW fair use actually works.

So, in case you didn´t know, fair use law is a creation of lawyers and the courts, YouTube uses it as a guideline for determining whether or not they take down a video.

However, YouTube is not a court, it is a company and its main motivating force is NOT to get sued, therefore, you could do your best to comply with all of their fair use policies and maybe even be very careful about it but still get your video slammed by YouTube if you don´t understand HOW fair use works.

Now, how can you avoid getting a copyright claim of any sort?

Here´s what to do:

Transform It! In order to qualify under fair use guidelines think about how you can transform other people´s art to avoid copyright strikes or any sort of legal issue. This can be (easily) done in the same way I´ve previously mentioned, by creating your own version of a song, using a different rhythm, style, instrument, or whatever it may be for you. Whatever you do you HAVE TO transform that copyrighted work into your own, and that way you won´t jeopardize your YouTube channel.
Mashups. Modifying the original song by doing a mashup can be a great way to create something quite unique and give an old song a newer and fresher sound, just like Shape of the Sickness does:

Attribution. Last but not least, make sure to attribute the song you are using to the original creator/artist, which makes a decent defense to a copyright strike from YouTube when used in combination with the tips I´ve just talk to you about. This means citing the original work of art in your description section, in your YouTube video.

Now, another question you may have is:

Can you monetize cover songs on YouTube?

The short answer is that it depends!

In order to be able to monetize a song cover video on YouTube, you would have to check out the Music Policies section within your Creator Studio interface, but more about this in the next tip, so keep reading!

3. The Right License

You MUST have permission to cover a song on YouTube and not infringe copyright laws, otherwise, you will get a strike or will have to share the proceeds from your video.

As I´ve said earlier, you can easily get a list of songs that offer permission to create a cover by using the Music Policies section within your channel.

Just sign in to your channel and head over to Creator Studio (or YouTube Studio beta):

Then, click on Create and after that on Music Policies:

Now you have a ton of songs you can choose from to make a cover on!

Just make sure to read their current copyright policies, if they even have one.

In fact.

According to Heather Greenslade from the singer-songwriting school YouTube channel says: “Sometimes there is no cover policy, other times your videos will play in most countries but maybe not in like New Zealand or Ecuador, and sometimes you can cover the song but the artist or the record label is going to play ads on your video.”

And this brings us to the next step you HAVE TO take in order to avoid such situations:

GETTING PERMISSION.

According to Copyright Laws in order to make any money with your cover YouTube videos you have to get permission, and that can come in two different forms, one is a Mechanical License that allows you to have the musical composition license and that enables it to be used, the other one is the Synchronization License, which allows you to perform the song as a YouTube cover, BUT these licenses can cost you a ton of money.

Therefore, it´s likely that you will not make money off your YouTube covers as most artists have reserved the right to make money off your YouTube covers themselves.

And this take us back to the previous point, which is having a better understanding of fair use law in order to take advantage of it, the right way!

To know what you have to do you must learn about the Content ID system on YouTube, which is my next point.

¿How Does Content ID Work On YouTube?

The main way an artist knows that you are doing a cover of his or her song is through YouTube´s Content ID system.

THAT is why as long as you change it up a bit, maybe turning those lyrics or making a different instrumentation arrangement, the Content ID system won´t pick it up and you´ll be able to make money with your video.

That being said, I wouldn´t advise you to forget the third tip I gave you when talking about Fair Use, which is Attribution, reread it if you need to because it´s really important to give credit where credit´s due.

As you see, the YouTube cover song license system has some layers you want to peal in order to get a better understanding of how everything works so that you avoid legal issues in the future.

4. Take Advantage Of YouTube SEO

Now that you know WHAT song you may cover next and HOW you´ll make your own version of it, it´s time to talk about getting discovered as a YouTube cover artist with…

…YouTube SEO.

In case you didn´t know, SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, which means creating content around what people want to see, complying with user experience, if you will.

Although there are many things that you can do to stand out on YouTube and reach new fans every single day there´s one thing that will prevent you from getting discovered and can possibly turn your entire strategy upside down.

That is CTR, which stands for Click-Through Rate, meaning the number of clicks you get per thousand impressions.

YouTube analyzes very closely the number of clicks your videos get whenever they show up on a persons feed, and, simply said, if you are ineffective to get clicks on your videos you will sink in the search results and won´t get any views.

The good news?

There´s a way to turn this around!

Thumbnails are your second-best strategy for getting to a wider audience after making a great piece of content.

It is what will make the difference when you upload a new video and it starts showing in people´s feeds or their homepage.

You HAVE TO work on your thumbnails as much as you work on your videos and song recording.

A good thumbnail can pretty much make or break your entire YouTube career.

That´s why I´m going to talk about them in greater detail when I talk to you about the smart distribution formula.

Now, the second best tip I can give you in order to take full advantage of YouTube SEO as a cover song maker is to start creating TUTORIALS.

There are tons of examples you can easily find on YouTube:

That is what this YouTuber did, by mixing things up between (mostly) covers and tutorials she achieved greater recognition, views, and more subscribers as that tutorial video is one of her most viewed videos until this day.

Probably the number one way most YouTubers start with, and you´ll find there´s no difference when it comes to artists.

If you do a good job at teaching others how to play a particular song and you are able to rank high on the search and repeat that same strategy a few times you´re going to get promoted that much more.

Then, people that like your tutorials will also be intrigued by your covers as they´ll want to see if you are any good and have something to offer to them.

Remember, successful content online gets massively consumed if it provides actual value, whether that is in the form of entertainment or education.

5. Add Production Value

Yes, you want to add some production value to the mix if you want to succeed covering songs on YouTube.

So, if you want to know how to record a cover song at home that is ready to be uploaded to YouTube then keep reading.

People usually tend to overestimate costly video-related gear over creativity all of the time, and although it can be helpful to have the latest Canon camera and the fanciest lens there are other things that matter even more than that.

If you take the time to compare some of the most popular covers on YouTube you´ll find way too many examples of homemade videos that couldn´t take more than half an hour, if not less, to make.

Truth be told, despite there are some very talented YouTubers out there that can easily make a great cover just by standing in front of the camera and start singing most of us should do an “extra” effort to succeed.

Here´s how:

Post-produce your audio. Once you´ve recorded your song you want to go through a minimal, at the very least, post-production process. Applying noise reduction on Audacity (which is free audio software) and checking out that everything is at the right level, maybe compressing, normalizing, and equalizing your audio if needed. You can find lots of great quick tutorials full of great tips to go through this process in a matter of minutes.
Simple soundproofing. Also, reducing the echo of your room or studio is super important. It is significant the difference between echoey audio and a soundproofed audio recorded clip. Make sure to shoot record your audio (not necessarily your video) in a controlled environment. This could mean that you create a customized environment by using foams on your walls to deepen the sound quality of your voice or simply make a DIY voice booth as this guy did:

Warm-up first. Take the time to warm up your voice and body to have a great singing session, you don´t want to directly put yourself in front of the mic and start recording. Your vocal strings work equally to the rest of your body muscles, I mean, you wouldn´t start lifting weights or sprinting a quarter-mile before you warm up a bit, right?
Three-point lighting. Set up a three-point light system, which means having a key light that brightens most of your scene and yourself, a fill light to (literally) fill the rest of your shot with light to soften the shadows, and a backlight to make yourself pop and create depth. More on that right here: Lighting For YouTube Videos.
Quick color grade. Last but not least, use LUTs. A LUT (Look Up Table) is an incredibly easy way to color grade footage and give it a particular look or style to your video. It´s another good way to brand your content and give it a more high-quality look to it. You can Google for free LUT packs you can use in pretty much most video editors so that you are able to make your song cover look a bit more professional.

6. Smart Distribution Formula

The sixth step to YouTube cover song creation is having a smart distribution strategy in place.

That´s why I suggest you use what I like to call the Smart Distribution Formula, which is focusing on the main three things that can make or break the way your video gets promoted on YouTube.

Now, although you´ve already heard about how important it is to have a custom thumbnail or to work on your titles nobody tells you EXACTLY what to do to get results, right?

Well then, I´m not going to let you hanging like that.

Here´s how it works:

Eye-Catching Thumbnail. Here are the main three things you should focus on: Your main subject should fill the frame, try to use a shallow depth of field to direct the viewer´s eyes to what you want them to focus on and make sure to put readable text using as fewer words as possible and avoiding unreadable fonts. Like this:

Enticing Title. Using only the most relevant and searchable terms you can think of. In order to do that, you can use the chrome extension Tubebuddy or VidIQ, both make a solid work at ranking YouTube keywords and relatable terms you can target at. Your most word should be your first word on your title, and try to evoke curiosity using “extra words” such as 10 top tips, 7 best ways, 5 little-known secrets of.
Right Tags. You don´t want to use ANY tags, you should use the RIGHT tags. This means two things: first, “steal” tags from your video´s competitors that are similar to yours using VidIQ, which is a super-simple and free tool you can easily add to your browser. Second, choose only tags relevant to your video, and add between 5 and 15 tags, not more than that, the algorithm uses them to “know” what your video is about, if you add too many tags it´ll only confuse what your video should be shown for.

7. Benefit From Native Video On Social Media

The last tip that I want to give you is a strategy that you can choose to use or not whether you are willing to do everything that it takes to make your channel stand out from the crowd or not.

Taking advantage of native video on social media means to repurpose a portion of your videos, a shorter clip that can entice people and make them want to watch the entire thing, by uploading a clip to Facebook, Twitter, or whatever other platforms you like.

It´s been proven that native content on social media gets promoted that much more as it keeps people within the platform itself.

In fact.

According to Forbes, native videos on Facebook get 10x more shares than YouTube videos. (source)

And that´s simply because Facebook wants people to stay on Facebook, therefore they´ll promote content that, at least, appears to be posted originally on the platform.

Then, you can put the link to your channel, or name your channel within the video, show it as a motion graphic title or whatever other strategies you choose to use or think can work best.

The full study comes from research done by Quintly where they proved that Facebook native videos have 530% more comments than linked-to videos. (full-study)

Now, what does this mean for YOU?

Simple, if you want to get that “extra” boost of traffic that can help you grow a bit faster than the competition and constantly get in front of new viewers then THIS might the right strategy to apply.

In addition to that, if you were already interested in promoting your videos on social media then you should know that native videos start playing automatically, while YouTube videos need to be tapped on, and they take much more to load as they use an external mobile web page which is then displayed inside Facebook’s wrapper.

Posting a Cover Song On YouTube (According To YouTube Itself!)

You already know there are some things you have to consider first in order to publish a cover song on YouTube and what can happen if you don´t comply with some of their policies.

So, in order to be prepared to whatever happens before it happens here´s another thing you may want to check out.

Are you ready?

Let´s dive in.

First, make sure to understand what fair use is (which I´ve already talked about) and how YouTube sees it.

For that, you can check out their Fair Use Guidelines and learn about the four factors of fair use, fair use myths, and other resources they´ve laid out for content creators to get more information about it.

Secondly, you can also reach out to other content creators that have already uploaded cover songs on YouTube to learn more about what they did on YTalk Forum.

Finally, you can check out other YouTube official channels, like YouTube Help:

You can apply these tips to your particular case, and see what happens.

The truth is that you won´t know EXACTLY what will happen until you try and upload your first cover video.

And that´s what I would suggest you do, start-taking-action!

The Digital Hustler

How To Record a Cover Song For YouTube (7 Actionable Tips!)