YouTube Music Startup Wants To Help Celebrities Get Subscribers

With over 340 million views, Soulja Boy owns one of the three hundred most viewed YouTube channels. This makes sense given his 6.8 million Facebook fans and his 4.8 million Twitter followers. His subscriber count is another story; with just 464,000 fans on his YouTube page, Soulja Boy’s online video fanbase trails behind his other social media tallies. That’s why the rapper, fresh off his Streamys performance, is one of several celebrities turning to Hipset, a relatively new startup that hopes to help popular musicians grow their respective fanbases by driving subscribers to their YouTube channels.

3 Doors Down and Daughtry have also partnered with the fledgling network; its investors include the founders of WordPress and Reddit. Instead of attempting to monetize its artists’ albums (a service already provided by VEVO), Hipset aims to curate behind-the-scenes and collaborative content which will theoretically bring subscribers to their clients’ channels.

Hipset plans to accomplish this goal by encouraging artists to engage their YouTube audience. “Artists don’t typically acknowledge that the camera is there,” explained company co-found Matt Schlicht. “YouTube is a place where you should be acknowledging the camera.” Hipset also hopes to create collaborations between musicians and YouTube stars; one of the creators they work with is popular Call of Duty gamer xJawz, whose ~one million fans represent a potential audience. More audience building advice is available on Hipset’s YouTube channel, which recently started posting videos.

Music is obviously a huge category on YouTube, and Hipset is out to prove that popular musicians are more than just a discography; they’re real people who are more than capable of connecting with teenaged video game players.

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