Music Business

YouTube Music Launches Daring Ad Campaign Featuring A Cross Dressing Teen, Rapping Hijabi Muslim, More [VIDEO]

YouTube Music logoThere are no reliable stats on how many people pay to use YouTube Music, but it clearly lags well behind Spotify, Apple Music, and Tidal.  In a move guaranteed to raise awareness, the Google owned music streamer has launched a brilliantly conceived, guaranteed-to-be-controversial ad campaign.

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"Music isn’t just what we listen to.

It’s who we are."

 

YouTube Music has launched a certain to be controversial ad campaign.

Under the moniker, "Music isn’t just what we listen to. It’s who we are,"a rural teen strips off his school clothes dress as a women over the soundtrack of Elliphant and Big Freedia's "Club Now Skunk."  

 

In another, a  young woman wearing an Hijab walks the halls of high school rapping along with Blackalicious' "Alphabet Aerobics."

 

In a third as, a parolee ends a tough day of community service work and greets her young daughter and male partner to a the island beat of "Naturally" by Machet.

 

In each of the 5 simply but beautifully shot videos, the lead character speaks little, if at all, while the music communicates both for and to them. "Music isn’t just a convenience" reads the campaign's tag line. "It builds the world we want to inhabit. It connects us to what matters the most. Music isn’t just what we listen to. It’s who we are."

Biggest Campaign Of The Year

Set to run for 8 weeks, this is reportedly YouTube's "biggest campaign we'll run this year." The 45 second spots will run nationally on digital, in movie theaters and on billboards in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles. 

There are two more ads in the series:

 

 

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22 Comments

  1. The guy that goes home and dresses up like a girl is topless for a bit before he changes into a bra and is transgender which is really then a girl, thus showing her breasts @ 0:39 earlier and is now pornography and is breach of their terms! Nice try trying to be PC YouTube. Your Ads are trash! Period!

  2. I hereby boycott Youtube music services.These ads dont represent normal people.

  3. I really wish I knew… Personally, I think the ads were pretty awesome; I think it’s about time ads introduced a little diversity. They’re also a lot less painful than most ads on youtube, like those fruit of the loom commercials.

  4. I agree with American Joe. In addition, why target an audience that is less than 1% of the US [religious] population?

  5. I use adwords video to remarket! My target audience consumes a lot of
    video content and as such we are evolving a robust video strategy.
    Working with video campaigns can be a lot of fun if you have your
    audience targeted well. Expensive if you don’t

  6. I really wish I knew… Personally, I think the ads were pretty awesome; I think it’s about time ads introduced a little diversity. They’re also a lot less painful than most ads on youtube, like those fruit of the loom commercials.

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  8. I really wish I knew… Personally, I think the ads were pretty awesome; I think it’s about time ads introduced a little diversity. They’re also a lot less painful than most ads on youtube, like those fruit of the loom commercials.

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