17 Mobile & Social Video Facts for Musicians

See the numbers behind why video is crucial for making an impact on social media and why it's time you were making square and vertical promo videos.

If you use social media yourself, then you already know how effective video can be. They're the posts that stop you mid-scroll with eye-catching motion and that you engage with for the longest in your feeds. As a pivotal tool for music promotion, there are tons of different types of videos you can use to build relationships with fans and drive engagement, and that list is always evolving. But if you're still not convinced that you should be investing time in mobile-friendly video creation, don't understand why it's not ok to just re-use a horizontal promo video everywhere, or you've ever wondered exactly WHY video on social and mobile matters so much, here's the proof.

Mobile traffic growth

Faster devices, better connectivity, and better user experiences on mobile are driving an explosion in mobile usage.

• From 2014—2019 mobile traffic grew 17 times larger. (What's New In Publishing)
• By 2022, mobile traffic is predicted to increase another 900%. (Cisco)

Social media consumption

Social media usage is thriving, and new platforms—especially video-centric ones—are starting every day.

• 90.4% of Millennials, 77.5% of Gen Xers, and 48.2% of Baby Boomers use social media. (eMarketer)
• People spend an average of 3 hours/day on social media. (Global Web Index)
• 91% of social media users access social via mobile. (Lyfe Marketing)
• 500M users use Instagram Stories every day, compared to 150 million/day in 2017. (Statista)

Mobile video & music videos

Video makes up the majority of mobile traffic, and music videos are the most popular video content out there.

• Mobile video accounted for 59% of total mobile traffic in 2017, and experts predict this will increase to 79% by 2022. (Cisco)
• 1 billion hours of video is watched on YouTube daily. (YouTube)
• Music videos make up 93% of YouTube’s most-watched videos. (Brandwatch)
• Fans now consume 47% of their music through on-demand video, which is outperforming paid and free audio streaming. (International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI))
• 92% of mobile video viewers share videos with others. (WordStream)

Video shapes matter

The shape of music is changing from horizontal videos that are reused everywhere to perfect fit square and vertical videos. While for years we only watched videos on social horizontally—and were even mocked for filming with our phones in portrait mode—square and vertical videos are now recognised as standard video formats by both social media users and video makers. Why the shift? Because data shows that videos that have been designed and cropped to fit in their native social habitats perform better in those feeds than horizontal videos.

• 70% of millennials don’t bother flipping their mobiles horizontally when watching videos. (AdNews)
• Square video takes up 78% more real estate in a person’s mobile newsfeed than a horizontal video. (AdWeek)
• Square videos on Facebook get 35% more views than landscape videos. (Buffer)
• Videos designed and sized specifically for mobile viewing are 27% more likely to drive brand awareness than videos that are not optimised for mobile. (Facebook)
• In experiments, Snapchat vertical video ads performed 9x better than horizontal ads.
• On Instagram, the percentage of watches of vertical videos to the halfway point (and beyond) are nearly double that of square video watches. (Buffer)

So if you want to improve the effectiveness of your music promotion on social, you need to be making videos with mobile viewing in mind and get those video shapes right to boost your impact.

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Video by DMC Filmes on Pexels