Just as a disclosure, I'm not an expert on AI music or youtube, but I think for what I've been doing since December 2024, I'm doing alright. I have a 74k sub channel that gets about 2 million views a month, and a few other channels. Latest channel I made started in Dec 2025 and got monetized March 2026. It's currently at 3.5k subs and earning average of 400 a month since it got monetized. I get a lot of questions so I'm condensing everything I say each time on this post.

1. Pick a clear niche

Do not make “AI music for everyone.” Don't just post random genres for a single channel. You can pivot when starting but don't make it confusing. Private videos that are no longer in line with the direction of the channel. Rebrand the channel if you need to. If I sub to your channel I want the video I subbed on to be similar to content I'll get moving forward. Pick a specific genre, mood, listener, or use case.

Make your branding purposeful. Nobody knows you or your music and sure as shit nobody will care about a fictional artist you make. Stop pretending you have a big deal artist when you don't. Intsead, package your music, videos, and channels purposefully. Make people know what they're clicking immediately.

Examples: uplifting reggae, chill house for studying, emotional breakup pop, lo-fi rap for late nights, relaxing acoustic playlists, funny songs about everyday life, or 1-hour background music for work.

A viewer should understand your channel within seconds. You can add branding but don't make it front and center until you actually have a following. I didn't even put logos on my videos until people started reuploading my content.

Also worth noting that not all niches are equal. Some niches have stronger demand and less competition while others are the other way around. Some niches are staunchly anti-AI. Figuring out a niche you'll be happy to create music for is one of the trickiest parts of starting.

Try to mix up genres. Or use music for purposes they're not designed for. Worship hiphop? Uplifting industrial rock? Carve out a subniche to stand out. It's AI music's strength.

2. Quality beats quantity

Do not mass-upload weak songs. Bad retention can hurt your channel.

Before uploading, check for a strong hook in the first 15–30 seconds, clean lyrics with no awkward AI phrasing, clear genre identity, good mix and volume, a memorable title or chorus, and a clear use case like relaxing, driving, studying, sleeping, or working.

Rule of thumb: do not upload a song you would not replay yourself.

3. Use long-form playlists/compilations

Singles are useful for testing, but long videos often work better for music channels because people use them as background listening.

Few people who are on Youtube for music will select single song videos they don't know. They usually want a playlist or a long video that just plays continuously. Interestingly, videos that are too long will suffer from low AVD so you don't want it too long either. 45 min to 1 hour seems to be perfect.

The longer format gives people a reason to stay, replay, and use your channel as background music. In turn it gives you watch hours, and subsequently, more ad revenue.

What I usually do is create 5-10 songs, and then repeat them once or twice to get a 45m-1hr. After a while I just mix up old songs with new ones so I don't have to repeat, or create a lot of new songs.

Shorts are a waste of time for AI music. Full stop.

4. Make thumbnails simple and readable

Thumbnails will determine how many views you will get. They have to stand out from everybody else. Be bright. Be loud. Be purposeful.

Use big readable text, one clear subject or mood, a consistent style, colors that match the music, and text that is readable on phones. Use Canva. If you want to use pro, you can get cheap licenses on G2G for a couple of bucks.

A simple formula is:

Big title + mood image + clear subtitle

Example:

<Image of pretty lady chilling on a rooftop>

MIDNIGHT CHILL
1 Hour Relaxing Music

5. Keep visuals simple

Avoid realistic AI singers or fake performances unless they look excellent. Bad mouths, hands, instruments, and animation can make the channel feel cheap.

Better options include static cover art, slow zoom or pan, lyric videos, (fake) audio visualizers, looping abstract animation, and mood-based background art.

A polished static video is usually better than a bad animated one.

I personally use static images with backgrounds removed, then add looping stock videos in he background, add audio visualizers, particle effects, and dynamic text. Sometimes I get fancy and use looping AI videos via Kling. I don't need anything fancy because people who watch YT for music don't care about visuals all that much. Just make it stylish enough for them to stay for the 1st 30 seconds and then let the music hook them in.

6. Use metadata wisely

Your title, description, tags, hashtags, and category should all point to the same audience.

Update your channel tags. They are used by YouTube specially for new channels.

For the videos, put three hashtags as the first three words of the description.

Example:

#LoFi #ChillMusic #StudyMusic

Original music playlist for relaxing, working, studying, driving, or background listening.

Tracklist:
00:00 Song 1
03:42 Song 2
07:15 Song 3

Created with AI-assisted music production, human curation, editing, and visual direction.

Keyword research is fair game. Study popular channels in your genre and look at their titles, descriptions, hashtags, video tags, playlist names, and thumbnail wording.

Using tag extractors on successful videos is fine. Do not copy someone’s brand, songs, lyrics, or exact packaging, but copying common searchable keywords is normal SEO.

Example title:

Midnight Chill - 1 Hour Relaxing House Music

Example tags:

ai music, original ai music, chill music, relaxing music, lofi music, study music, background music

7. Post consistently, but do not spam

Consistency helps YouTube understand your channel, but only if the content is good enough.

A good starting schedule is one long mix per 1-2 weeks.

Avoid dumping dozens of similar videos at once. Regular uploads are better than mass uploads.

8. Watch your analytics

Do not judge only by views. A video with fewer views but good retention may be more useful than a video with many low-quality clicks.

Watch CTR for thumbnail and title strength, average view duration for music retention, the retention graph for where people leave, returning viewers for real audience interest, comments for emotional connection, and traffic source for how YouTube is finding viewers.

Quick diagnosis:

Low CTR usually means a title or thumbnail problem.
Good CTR but bad retention usually means a music, intro, or visual mismatch.
Good retention but low impressions may mean a niche or channel momentum issue.

Use the data to decide what to repeat, improve, or stop doing.

9. Be honest about AI

Be transparent, but do not make “AI” the whole brand. Most listeners care more about the music experience than the tool.

Better branding:

Relaxing original music playlists

Weaker branding:

AI-generated AI music made by AI

Simple disclosure:

This channel features original music created with AI-assisted production, human curation, editing, and visual direction.

Let the niche and mood lead. Let the AI disclosure be clear but secondary.

10. Avoid risky shortcuts

Original songs are safest when starting. Covers, artist imitation, and copied melodies can create copyright or monetization problems.

Avoid covers unless you understand copyright and monetization rules, famous melodies or lyrics, artist names in titles, “sounds exactly like [artist],” AI vocals imitating real singers, bought views/subscribers/comments/watch time, and repetitive near-identical uploads.

Don't do sub for sub. Don't pay for any promotion service. Don't bot.

Shortcuts can hurt the channel more than they help. You get banned for this, you get banned for life, along with other channels you have that might not even use AI.

Best simple formula

Original niche music + strong thumbnail + 45–60 minute playlist + searchable title + consistent uploads + analytics-based improvement.

Example first upload:

Title:
Midnight Chill - 1 Hour Relaxing Original Music

Thumbnail text:
MIDNIGHT CHILL
1 HOUR RELAXING MUSIC

Description opener:

#LoFi #ChillMusic #RelaxingMusic

Original AI-assisted music playlist for relaxing, studying, working, driving, or late-night background listening. Created with human curation, editing, and visual direction.

I know I don’t look like it, but I watch a lot of anime.

People think anime is useless, but I think it actually helps your finances.

There’s this one anime called Spice and Wolf. It’s set in the medieval era. It’s about a merchant and a goddess traveling together doing business, and you learn about arbitrage, short selling, credit margins…

And let me tell you, every time I explain that on a date, I never get a second one.

Saving me a lot of money.

I moved to the US in 2019. Started doing comedy here post pandemic in 2022. 4 years in, I'm featuring regularly in my city and occasionally headlining, doing festivals and won a few competitions. The scene has been very good to me.

I am the only Filipino doing regular comedy here and there arent a lot of Filipinos so it makes my act kind of unique, which I feel helps a lot in getting people to like me.

While that's a good thing it also begs the question: Am I only funny because I'm niche and the scene is smaller than NYC, LA, and Chicago?

I haven't done much comedy outside my state so I felt like I needed to try things out. I've also recently been recovering from heartbreak and thought I'd hit two birds with one stone to just travel to Chicago for a week to answer my question and get a break from everything else.

I messaged several people in advance to get booked on actual shows. I didn't get a lot of responses but I accepted that nobody would trust some unknown comic when there are plenty of good local comics. I was planning on starting from the bottom up anyway by hitting open mics and networking with local comedians after they saw my act.

I booked a motel for a week and then drove here with another comedian in tow.

For the first time in many years I was anxious. It felt like the first time I did comedy here coming from the Philippines and wondering if the Filipino humor would work on American crowds. Chicago has a big Filipino community. There are multiple Filipino comics. The scene here is a lot more fast-paced than my city and I felt at the time that the comedy standards are higher.

I arrived just a few hours before my first show. I used my best jokes. I felt like my nervousness bled into my set and didn't do as well as I should. I got some laughs but not as strong as I wanted them to be. Still, the comic who saw me and my friend invited me into his show, which was at a bigger comedy club, so I was equal parts happy, and even more nervous.

The comics at the first show were all VERY good. They were comics who already had Dry Bar specials, toured nationally, and worked the big clubs. I felt like I barely kept up. Not gonna lie I felt my confidence shaken.

I went to a few more mics. The scene is insane. They had 10 open mics on a Sunday. ON A SUNDAY. In my city we had one. My jokes were hit and miss but I thought it was a good opportunity to do some soul searching on my comedy.

Then I finally did the big comedy club show. It was just a 6 minute guest spot but I crushed it. The host told me to message me the next time I'm in town to get a full feature spot. Boi I was fucking ecstatic. It took me three days but I got my answer:

Filipino comedy works even in the bigger scenes! My comedy works in Chicago!

I went to more mics and have been doing well. Comics wanted to connect with me, I got booked into more shows.

Balancing remote work during the day and comedy at night has been physically taxing but I've not felt this rush for comedy in a long time. I feel like the sheer frequency of stagetime is just causing me to evolve in real time like that hyperbolic time chamber in Dragonball lol.

There's an almost spiritual effect on me after trying comedy here, like my horizon opened up. I've resolved that I'll always be a weekend warrior kind of comedian because I have a career that is my bread and butter, and a daughter to raise, but now I'm just seeing a bit more possibility of my standup hobby going a bit farther, making it a bit bigger.

I've earned next to nothing going here but I feel like it's fine. I'm treating this like an investment of sorts. I still have 3 days left here and I'm planning to make the most out of them then I'll probably figure out how to make this a regular thing. Once I go back to my city, I have a competition to join, which I feel like I'm training for with this trip (not intentionally) and I feel excited to do that one too.

There are still days when I wonder what the hell I'm doing, why I should be doing comedy in my 40s when I could be doing something else that would probably pay more or make me healthier.

But for this week at least, I can tell you this much: I like making strangers laugh. I like meeting new people who do the same thing. I'm doing just fine in a bigger scene. I like comedy. And I'll keep on doing it.