Meet Boyce Avenue, YouTube's most followed indie band
ANAHEIM, Calif. - The members of Boyce Avenue were early on YouTube, and it paid off.
They started in 2007, and slowly began to develop a following. By using the same sort of search optimization techniques for their music that websites use to be found, the Sarasota, Florida brothers now have nearly 2 billion views on YouTube for their videos, and more importantly, a thriving social network (nearly 3 million strong on Facebook) in which to sell tickets to their shows, music tracks and merchandise to their legions of fans.
To learn more, we met up with the group at the recent NAMM show here, where we did a live #TalkingTech interview from the Taylor Guitars booth.
Today, the three brothers are the most followed indie band on YouTube, with 6.6 million subscribers. That's more than Maroon 5 (5.7 million) Linkin Park (4.6 million) or Coldplay (3.1 million) and if you want to take out the "band" distinction, also more than Ariana Grande (5.8 million), Lady Gaga (5.5 million) or Selena Gomez (5.4 million.)
The band looked at finding an audience on YouTube as a "business," says brother Alejandro Manzano. "We would put up three videos a month, and have been doing it ever since."
They also made a conscious effort to become searchable, by recording "cover" versions of other songs. "Nobody's going to search for a song they don't know," he added.
The group covered tunes by James Taylor, John Legend, Justin Timberlake, Bruno Mars and Tracy Chapman, and recorded them in their own, acoustic way. From there, their covers became so popular (the Legend cover of "All of Me" has 17 million views; Timberlake's "Mirror" has 67 million views) others began doing covers of Boyce's covers.
And their own music is being covered as well, with many young YouTubers offering both their takes on Boyce tunes, and how-to instructional videos showing how to play their compositions on the guitar.
From YouTube, the band lived the dream--a record company, Universal owned Republic, signed them up, but it was short-lived. The band was unhappy. Too much red tape.
"It was a horrible pairing," says brother Daniel. "One of the happiest days for us was when we got off the label. We saw a big resurgence." Now they "deliver music straight to fans."
In 2014 alone, Neilsen SoundScan reported hefty sales of 2.9 million digital tracks, 196,000 albums and 57.5 million streams.
The group has played for over 400,000 people in 20 countries and 5 continents including the US, Canada, Australia, Asia, Brazil, Europe, the UK and Dubai. They are currently on a huge tour of stadiums in Asia and on February 12th will be in Malaysia, followed by the Philippines and Singapore.
Follow Jefferson Graham and Boyce Avenue on Twitter