YouTube is Not Good for Musicians
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- Опубліковано 2 жов 2024
- Musicians need to learn that music sucks, actually. The algorithm has spoken; the audience has spoken. Music is boring and old news. Don't be a musician on UA-cam. Do anything else. Maybe react to other people's music?
OK, to be slightly less clickbaity, here's the advice I've heard on how to be a musician on UA-cam. You tell me if this still counts.
1. Do react videos of other people's music that people are already listening to/talking about.
2. Do fandom content of currently popular/currently discussed fandoms
3. Include "gimmicks" in music beyond the "standard MTV music performance video format."
4. Perform live shows as openers to more popular bands, and then include your social media for those shows
5. Collaborate with more popular musicians on UA-cam, and then include your social media for these collaborations
If you use UA-cam to discover new music and new musicians, please share what your process is!
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The struggles of being an artist...
I know some good ones that have horribly low subscriber counts.... Even when they acquired thousands to millions of views.
Heck, I still think that for doing music on UA-cam for as long as he has, Johnny Atma (GaMetal) has a criminally low count...
Maybe the game was rigged from the start..
Interestingly, maybe doing some sort of side content would get one more notoriety. Like what if one was a music composer and a .. streamer on the side or something... Lure people in with a talent and then smack them with the music.
... 😭 Either way it doesn't wholly fix the issue though...
Oh yo, Subversive mention at the ending. 🤭
At the end of the day, the "game" is audience preferences and behaviors. Overall, if audiences don't like music, then we can't say that's rigged. it's just what people like, and how we will respond to it.
But yeah, every indication seems to be, "don't just do music." So music with streaming on the side would probably be more successful. But a lot of musicians aren't interested in doing those other things. I don't really like streaming so I'm probably not ever going to "switch" to that. (I mean, "never say never", but...)
But what I have actually seen is musicians simply *change their channel* because the other content isn't really luring people to the music. People just stay for the streaming or just stay for the reactions or whatever. When they see that doing reaction videos is so much more successful than composing (and usually a lot easier as well,) they scale back their covers and scale back their compositions entirely. I have seen SEVERAL musicians change their main content type away from music entirely because the other content performs so much better than the music.
I had a screenshot of a tweet response from LionMight at some point in the video, because this is basically what he has done. Look at his most recent videos. Compare the views on the reaction videos to the views on music. It's dramatically different! And i'm not gonna lie, Diwa is a super successful musician, composer, award winning, etc., He has had success offline and online with music. So for *him* to still see that the views are in reactions is really saying something.
Alright this is a really great point that of course, I'm excited to dissect with at 2:30 roughly. Folks who are producing home-grown videos that may have been relatively better received in 2015 or even 2020, does not magically stay novel in 2024 and that's a challenge to every DIY musician. I have a lot of discussions with folks who observe outliers, disregard key aspects that made this music video style format relevant or, subjectively interesting and unique, and wonder why we're at record low viewage for old channels (I know I sure am!). However.. doing things outside of music is now the best way to introduce folks to more traditional performance videos or whichever I do.
This year I've played 3 gigs at video game music cons, very difficult to put together and get those opportunities of course, and each time I would meet new people who hadn't heard of me at all but followed me afterwards. People who would see my type of visuals and guitar play would immediately get more of that on my UA-cam channel, even though I don't organically grow my channel in this space. I can't recommend this live-first, shreddy instrumentation method to everyone and I do not believe in shortcuts, but having the VFX/comedic skit style of music video WITH very technical playing is the novelty for me - it probably would at the very least lead to more remarkable content. As a bonus, the metal community tends to enjoy those aspects far more than any one person in their room playing an instrument and I do try to singularly choose trending games or ones where I'll be exclusively covering it.
I think that your comment is absolutely consistent with what Daniel was saying, and with what the coaches/gurus would recommend -- you can't *just* do the performance videos, you have to do things outside of music and then draw them into the performances.
Several people commented that they discover new music through seeing unfamiliar bands opening at other concerts, so that is very consistent with your comment about playing gigs at VGM cons. But this does not challenge my point that *UA-cam* isn't the way to grow. Rather, you grow through offline, and then you direct people *to* UA-cam.
The struggle is real! I think you laid out a lot of great reasons that people aren't successful today with music, but I think another big one is bias toward videos that already have social proof. If a video has 50k views, it's *much* more likely to be clicked than one that is new with under 1k. There was a thread on twitter a few months back where johnathan young mentioned he would never click on a video with fewer than 1k views on it because it's "not good." Or doesn't appeal to a wide enough audience. It might be good, but unless enough people give it a try and share it, it'll never reach the threshold that other people are willing to click. There's a reason that the covers from 2015 are *still* getting 100 views per hour, and that's because they have millions of views. Even if something new is of the same caliber as the old one, any reasonable person will pick the one that is "proven" rather than risk wasting their time on something unproven.
@@SheaViolin I'm going to have to find that Jonathan Young thread, LMAO. I know people have hypothesized about social proof being a big factor, but I don't think I've ever seen anyone state it that starkly. that's a really foreign perspective to me. That being said, I think that there are other "tells" beyond view count, such as more amateur thumbnails or titles, etc, but I think that smaller UA-camrs can learn how to design similar thumbnails to more established UA-camrs - that just takes time and practice.
I have heard rumors of UA-cam considering experimenting with removing view counts from being shown. Maybe that would end up being a really controversial decision like removing public dislike count?
@@subversiveasset I'm sure it would be controversial since that's another primary indicator of quality along with likes/comments.
You could always try making other kinds of videos but producing your own music for it.
I think the YMS guy started out as a musician, then when he pivoted to movies he would promote his albums at the end. He also talks a lot about the music in what he reviews, which gives him the chance to show his own talent and knowledge.
First off I really wanna mention I find it absolutely absurd that the growth gurus are telling you to not make music.
I can understand that as a self published musician, taking care of your releases and making sure people can get to them is part of what you got to do. But I dislike telling people they have to change their content for it to be found.
Anyways as a game developer I really dislike that developers at youtube would say that the algorithm just follow the viewer.
On a base level that is very much true. But the entire website and ecosystem does affect what a viewer is more likely to engage with.
In games this can be very apparent, because some game-elements make it more likely for players to act in a certain way. When a games only proper mode of communication is teabagging over someones corpse that will lead to more toxicity due to the only mode of interaction being making fun of people that lost.
In comparision fromsoftwares (dark souls devs) game have a really jolly feeling of cooperation in multiplayer thanks to in-world emotes, which allow you to greet people, show of some weapon or show your chivalry or respect. Outside of the game of course this isn't as visible because of the high amount of marketing to challenge players that barely engage with the multiplayer aspects.
(Afterthoughts made a great video that touches on this called: "Can we make games less toxic? YES.")
Similarly to a toxic online game having an issue with only allowing modes of interaction that blame others for their mistakes. I believe youtube has an issue with users only being allowed to interact throughout of the algorithm to find content.
I think I already mentioned this on your discord channel, but I really dislike the youtube search feature.
I think it is a major reason why people don't find new music through youtube. Because there's just no way to do so other than hoping the algorithm has blessed you with a video that has 20 views.
I cannot pop something like or "saxophone music" into the title-bar and look at whatever saxophone music someone has thrown onto this platform. I can kind of get this when I restrict my search by time. But the filter options are reset with every new search query and are very vague. And then without specific Browser addons youtube will try its best to get you away from this search bar by showing you shorts and switching the search results out with your normal recommendations.
UA-cam does NOT want people to use the search function.
And I think this kind of proves your point. The only way to get views on youtube is to hang on to thin threads that connect your videos to already existing topics.
And this IS an issue with youtube, a search that allows users to filter more efficiently by release time as well as topic would help find more new things.
But the sad part is, something like this is very unlikely to be implemented by youtube. And even if it probably wouldn't have an instant enormous impact on indie artists due to the existing systems that encourage to watch either 2 minute or 2 hour videos and the users being used to feeding of their recommendations.
So this is not an option.
So the only means to adress this issue to me is on a personal level.
The best I can do t fix this issue is to look for niche things through other means than youtube.
In music I am not very well educated on the possibilities. But in future I hope to use websites like Bandcamp and Soundcloud more extensively.
As for now, I mostly listen to Touhou music, therefore I am using a website to look through all the newest remix-albums and check up on the XFDs to see if I am interested. Sometimes these albums are collection albums that cover a broad spectrum of artists so I can look those up if I want. And I also listen to Gensokyo Radio which has a pretty broad range of albums and musicians (all touhou remixes of course).
When it comes to video games I have a far better outlook to find new artists. Itchio is focused on indie developers and allows users to find new games FAAAAAAAAAAAR more easily than trying to do anything similar on youtube.
In fact I am currently subscribed to the newest metroidvania games coming out on itchio via RSS feed. Taking a short glance on my second screen I can see I might play through "suta koreku", "Catto Chateau", "Well Met", "Katana Rabbid", "Bo-Blob", "NBB.exe", "An Amazing Wizard: Prologue" and "odiosa".
And while lots of stuff on itchio is bad, I love games so i have no issue playing some kids first video game. Honestly I LOVE playing some kids first video game, always very nostalgic.
I think feeds that show the most recent releases and maybe the recent popular releases are a good way to find new things.
If you know of any music platforms that would allow me to look through things in such a manner with maybe some tags to get some filtering, please do tell me. I'd really love to try find more music without relying on youtube or it being Touhou remixes.
(And lastly:
I checked up on the video you skipped in the beginning and I think the twitter post was only reffering to the video having many views. In a way saying that the cross-platform-marketing-machine works.
At first I thought he was trying to say the music was outstanding because it had a little gimmick where some lines would only be played out of the left or right speaker fitting to the lyrics.
But I don't think they are interested enough about the music as to care about some minor artistic aspect like that.)
The same reason we saw the big music channels of old slow die off like Mystery Guitar Man, or more recently Seth Everman. UA-cam is unfortunately not optimized for art, but rather engagement, and small creators will suffer for it. I want to say something, but I don't have enough knowledge on the subject to make any kind of recommendation. I think the biggest thing is that when people see your videos thumbnails, they are not clicking on them. Finding the reason for that is probably going to be what makes or breaks your channel.
@@SpicyChedderJack 100% agreed. Overall, since everything gets back to audience behavior - what will someone click and watch on - that means that understanding audience psychology and behavior becomes the most important thing.
At this point, I'm still interested in understanding how (or even if) people decide to watch new music on UA-cam. If you think about your own watch history, do you have any personal thoughts?
@@subversiveasset From personal experience, and looking at my history, a big motivator appears to currently be either eye catching text, or anime women. you can come to whatever conclusion you want about what that says about me, but I similarly don't often seek out new music on youtube, and when I have found it in the case of ShadyCicada or Sponzi those are the consistancies between the two.
I have only a 1/40 of your subscribers. My numbers are all over the place. What is a 2000+ Video here might not really work on Spotify and vice versa. And no one seems to use YT Music 🤔 when it’s just the music
Thank for your thoughts. I will consider all of them
@@SoulinSadness my fun issue for Spotify is I keep doing covers that are not easily licensed for Spotify. But yeah, totally different traffic patterns here vs there!
@@subversiveasset There is also much truth in "people click on things they already know" yeah... I hear the same thing from movietubers: Always chased by the new "big thing"
I posted a song and lost a subscriber 😭 it's rough out here
so what i have found interesting is that in any other type of newsletter or email marketing situation, there's so much advice about how to *trim* your mailing list so that you're only emailing the people most likely to read. People don't want the highest number just to have a higher number. They want a more engaged audience.
So, whenever I see people unsubscribe, I try to hold back the tears and say, "this is just someone realizing their tastes have changed, and that's good for everyone ."
But then another thing I also notice is that I don't really pay attention to my subscriptions tab anymore. Usually, I watch based on the home page, and recommendations don't have to be based on whether I've subscribed or not. I think a lot of people end up watching a lot of channels they haven't subscribed to because of home page recommendations
@@subversiveasset that makes sense! I've been trying to reframe my mindset but I don't know where to redirect my energy to. So that's one way to think about it and I think that's pretty helpful!