Brandon Ginsberg/Red Light Management
Madilyn Bailey has 6 million subscribers on YouTube.
- Musician Madilyn Bailey, who now has a YouTube channel with 6 million subscribers, said starting a music career on YouTube wasn't easy.
- In an interview with Business Insider, Bailey credited her cover of "Titanium," which blew up overnight and now has 100 million views, with helping launch her career.
- But she still worked for about three years before "Titanium" without earning a real income from her music, she said.
- Bailey moved from Wisconsin to Los Angeles, where she now lives and pursues music full-time, employing her dad and husband on her team.
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In 2012, Madilyn Bailey uploaded a cover to the David Guetta song "Titanium" to her YouTube channel. It became an overnight hit.
That video, which now sits at 100 million views, allowed her to quit her job and move to Los Angeles to pursue music full-time.
But making a music career on YouTube wasn't been an easy road, and Bailey worked for years building her online fan base before "Titanium" became a hit, she told Business Insider in a recent interview.
From a small town in Wisconsin to making it in LA
Bailey, who now has 6 million subscribers on YouTube, started her channel in 2009 when she was 16 and living in a small town in Wisconsin (she's now 27). She taught herself to write songs, play drums, guitar, and ukulele using online resources.
"As I was falling in love with music, I started seeing that people were posting videos of themselves doing acoustic versions of pop songs on YouTube, just right off their camera, nothing crazy," she said. She started a channel with the help of her mother, who made Madilyn pick her first and middle name (Bailey) as her stage name and helped her film her first few videos.
Within the first six months, Bailey began gaining attention online from groups like "Jonas Group," the management group that at the time managed the Jonas Brothers and Demi Lovato, she said. She graduated six months early from high school and began flying out to LA to film videos, using her job as a certified nursing assistant to buy plane tickets.
But she still wasn't making much money.
"It took about three years to start earning any sort of income," she said.
When Bailey started her channel, creators didn't have the option to monetize their channels through YouTube's Partner Program. She earned money by streaming her songs on iTunes and Pandora, using a website to distribute her music across the platforms.
Her advice to musicians starting out online is to put their music on every platform possible, and use a website like she did to easily distribute songs. Distributing music to streaming platforms allows an artist to start earning money as more people discover their music, and is a better option than relying on YouTube alone, she said.
Brandon Ginsberg/Red Light Management
'Develop yourself'
After "Titanium" took off, Bailey moved to LA to pursue music full-time.
Once in LA, Bailey took artist development classes and tried to get in as many writing sessions as possible.
"As you are growing your audience on YouTube, develop yourself," she said she'd advise those looking to start a music career on YouTube. "Put yourself in tons of sessions. Anyone who will write with you, write with them."
Bailey said she's been in about 200 writing sessions since she's moved to LA, and is now in a place where she has a clear vision of where she is headed as an artist, with an audience who she can release music to online.
Bailey also signed with Warner Music Group's label PlayOn in 2015 and now has a team for things like booking shows and making sure her videos get posted and edited. Bailey's husband helps film and edit her videos and her dad also works for her.
But it all started from years of work without making significant money.
"Start posting, that's my biggest piece of advice," Bailey said. "The more stuff you can put out there, the more of a chance you'll have at something blowing up."