- Finn McKenty
- Posts
- 120k subscribers on our company YouTube channel
120k subscribers on our company YouTube channel
Here's how we did it...

At our last in-person event (2019)
Since 2017, I’ve been a partner in a company called URM Academy that does education for music producers (think Skillshare, but for music).
I mostly focus on our product management and product design (our “product team” is two people: me and our engineer Tarik, who is a dream to work with). But I also manage our YouTube channel, and it's been driving me nuts for years that it never really lived up to its potential.
And I’m happy to say that we finally got that: Our channel recently hit 120,000 subscribers and we’re getting 15K-40K views per video. My goal is to consistently hit 100k per video, but for now I’m just happy that we got out of the rut 🙌
Here's how we did it:

Original content
Our channel started in 2016, and we’ve mostly used it to publish clips from the educational content behind our paywall, which is very detailed stuff about music production. Yes, it’s “music,” but it’s called audio engineering for a reason— it’s more like writing code than it is “art.”
The clips did OK (usually 5-10k views with some outliers in the 100-300k range), but we knew it wasn’t ideal, so we switched to talking head videos ala Legal Eagle, Renaissance Periodization, etc.
The takeaway: Your content needs to feel PLATFORM NATIVE on YouTube or anywhere else.
Repurposed content can be better than nothing, but honestly, sometimes it isn't even that. For example, every sad B2B channel full of repurposed webinars that get 47 views— at that point, the optics are so bad that it’s brand-negative IMO.
Co-founder hosted
Our content is taught primarily by guests (around 150 of them to date), so that means our channel had an “ensemble cast” by default.
And that’s generally not ideal, because YouTube works best when the audience feels a personal connection to the person on the screen. In a lot of ways I think of it as a “friend simulator” more than content. That means ensemble casts are always tough, because We are naturally programmed to connect with individuals, not groups.
And when it comes to hosts, founders almost always have the most credibility, so they're usually the best person to be the face of the company on YouTube.
If you’re not comfortable on camera, don’t worry about it— that's a learned skill that you can build over time, just like anything else. If you don’t believe me, go watch some of my YouTube videos from 2017/2018. I was…… not good 😅

More accessible topics
You've heard people talk about how important the title and thumbnail is, which is true, but what's much more important than all of that is the topic of the video. The best title and thumbnail in the world won’t make a boring topic into an interesting one.
This is where almost every company channel goes wrong: they go too niche, and limit themselves to a tiny audience.
Our product is for music producers, so the content gets very technical. Like I said, it’s closer to software engineering than it is “art”:
→ How to fix phase cancelation issues created by EQ plugins
→ Why your master bus should peak at -3db before hitting the limiter
→ The differences between analog and digital summing mixers
That's fine for behind the paywall because they’re on our app to learn, but remember: YouTube is a consumer entertainment app. It doesn’t matter if your content is “valuable,” people mostly just don’t go on YouTube for hardcore learning.
So we "niched up" to more accessible stuff like “Music producer reacts to Metallica documentary,” opinions on the overall music industry, etc. Importantly, this stuff is ALSO appealing to the same people who would show up to watch our technical material, so it’s all upside for us.

Standardized formats
Audiences hate variety. They want you to be as consistent as possible: same topics, same format, same length, etc.
Some of our clips were 3 minutes, some were 30 minutes, and they’d be next to a podcast episode that’s 2 hours long. This is a terrible idea because it’s just not how people use YouTube— nobody is going to tune in for your 11 minute clip of technical information AND your 2 hour, rambling podcast.
It's okay to experiment in the beginning, but once you find something that sticks with your audience, double down on that and drop everything else.
So we started a new channel for our podcast, and standardized on 15-20 minute talking head videos as the format.

He got 143k views in 2 days on a video about progressive JSON. What's your excuse?
The bottom line
There's nothing here that any other company couldn't do.
Yes, it helps that our product is about music, which naturally lends itself to an entertainment app like YouTube. But even that's not entirely true given how super technical our product is— and there are plenty of people out there getting big views on technical topics by making it entertaining and therefore YouTube-friendly.
Your company YouTube channel isn’t struggling because “YouTube’s not right for our industry.”
It’s struggling because it’s boring.
PS - If you like my emails, reply to this and say hi! I don’t have any room for new clients right now so I have nothing to sell you, but I always like talking with people 🥳