I’m philosophically opposed to paying Google for things like Youtube because the whole company is a massive ad agency pretending to be a software R&D lab. But once I got beyond that block and actually subscribed to youtube premium it was absolutely worth it.
On my desktop machine, youtube usually plays from a second monitor that is on the periphery of my field of vision.
I didn’t find the strength yet to break the barrier of paying google for personal use, considering my main personal google account is checks notes almost 15 years, when I’ve set it up it was a different realm with no privacy issues or anything like that, so I’m having a slight problem with just handing google the last piece of my personal info…
btw I have no issues paying GSuite for several business projects, but for personal stuff, nah…
I feel like there’s a lot of overlap between this topic and the “can you just make a quick video” thread. I was thinking about it the other day, and I think that the reason making a quick video (ie a janky, no frills, umms and aahh’s included video) bothers people, is that in order to share it they plan on uploading it to youtube which then makes it public.
I think that shows that most people who upload videos are doing so for a youtube audience and then there are some people of those who are sharing off youtube on sites like elektronauts or (insert generic random web forum where there are people you want to reach here).
It used to be that people actually would use youtube as a generic upload dump for sharing videos with family or just to get it off of your device and it wasn’t implied to be so glamorous (that may not be the correct word, but it states what my impression is of how youtube culture presents itself) or social.
Now, to me, youtube has been ruined, or to some people it’s not ruined but evolved, by influencers and advertising, by what I guess you could call progress but it’s really kept me away from using youtube for “background noise” as some people do. I think that’s part of why my natural inclination towards youtube is to use it so little, and then to some, it’s a culture so I’m not going to gatekeep people for how they use it just because I’m not into it.
From a forum standpoint I kinda don’t give a shit where the music is posted, but I’m not really impressed with gearshot music on youtube any more than I am by a dull jam in a silver box. However my internet is slow as fuck and youtube LAGS badly, so if my internet is slow today, I’m not going to bother with constant glitching and buffering to hear your jam and I don’t think I’m the only one with shitty internet. Meanwhile soundcloud, bandcamp and silver box uploads never lag or stutter so I’m more likely to play those just knowing that I won’t have to deal with that aspect of it.
Sometimes it honestly bothers me more from the standpoint of thinking that a person is posting this as a youtube clip to increase their number of views on youtube rather than exclusively to share the music, but that may just be my ultra-biased perspective.
It really doesn’t bother me that it does the same with soundcloud (increase the view count) even though I’m not a fan of soundcloud’s format, just that in my mind, soundcloud has pretty much one purpose which is to share music or sounds and you can call it hypocritical if you want, but perhaps the difference when I really squint at it, is that there is no influencer culture dominating the algorithm on soundcloud or bandcamp.
Some forms of media are designed to be both audio and visual. Ballet, for example. Experiencing ballet is, in part, connecting the audio and visual, the music and the choreography.
Our brains have evolved, I think, to associate any simultaneously occurring visual and auditory stimuli. In nature they generally point to the same thing (predator?).
But now, thanks to our awesome technology, we can juxtapose any audio with any video, without any necessary logical connection between the two. Consider the famous scene from Platoon, where the main characters are getting their asses blown off in slow motion, accompanied by Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings. This scene is generally recognized as brilliant. I think it’s just ironic. It’s currently the rage to accompany scenes of extreme violence and cruelty with cheery, upbeat music.
We can do better. By making the music and the audio analogous, for example. Product of the parts greater than the sum.
There are definitely a few users here that do this. Replying to threads with their own videos or only posting when they have a new video/something to post that generates them some sort of visibility.
It’s cool, but also share a SoundCloud link and don’t ask me to join your patreon.
I’d personally prefer to have a filter on all that as it’s spammy and I don’t think it belongs here. Tutorials are always welcome, but I have zero interest in seeing someone share a video of them playing gear.
We live in the era of content.
Recorded music has to compete for attention with recorded music plus a filmed performance.
If a musicians only way to grab attention is with a video of them playing I feel sorry for them. Producing is hard, needing to worry about filming yourself is unnecessarily pressuring. And then to think you start rating your own music based on views and likes… very toxic for a creative process.
Ultimately it’s not a video that makes or breaks an artist, it’s their music and their connections to the scene in which they are active.
Success isn’t the same for any two people but I think this hasn’t been true of commercial music production since the beginning of Top of the Pops.
I prefer to listen to music rather than watch videos, because I typically listen to music wit doing other things (working, driving, cooking, cleaning). If I’m tied to a video, then the video becomes the activity.
That said, I’ve started to record a video component to my recent tunes. YouTube isn’t trying to get paid for storage like SoundCloud, where I have long since exhausted the free quota, so I appreciate the ability to use YT as my music repo. It isn’t really that much extra effort to record a video when I’m doing the final track record, plus it’s fun to learn something new. And if it caters to a few people who prefer video and are willing to listen to my music, I don’t see that as a bad thing.
I’m the same way and being a GearTuber is certainly a last ditch effort to make people appreciate my music(gosh dangit)
But…
There are plenty of people that enjoy seeing the gear, people that see all the expensive gizmos and will inherently value the sounds made more(disappointing i know), and people that will prefer there to be SOME visual component to the music(even if its just gear)
Unless seeing the gear actually reduces your enjoyment of the sounds of the track, I don’t see anything wrong with the creator or the sharer casting the widest net possible?
This topic kind of reminds me of Bruce Springsteen’s disdain for mtv when it started. YouTube killed the mtv star?
No it’s not really that, I am simply someone that likes to listen to music rather than watch. It’s the same when mixing a track, when you don’t look at the levels there is more room for the brain to listen.
I think people should do what they want in regards to releasing, however if you only share a YouTube video and not a link to some audio only I will skip because I have no interest in seeing hands doing things with gear.
Let’s be clear, I’m not trying to gatekeep how we listen to music. Everyone is free to do what they like, however I prefer listening rather than watching. It’s a preference and the idea that seeing gear makes a track more interesting is strange to me.
I’m sorry if I implied you were trying to gate keep. I absolutely did not mean it that way. I totally get where you’re coming from. I actually fought watching anything on YouTube at all for the first decade or so that it existed. I’m a nerd that buys new records and cassettes. I don’t even like looking at Bandcamp when I listen to a song. I legitimately miss iPods for the sake of not being able to scroll on the device I’m listening to music to.
I didn’t get into to YouTube until I started buying samplers and synths again in the late teens, and didn’t understand the manuals.
Some of my favorite music to listen to is only accessible through Youtube as far as I can tell - for example music that was released in a limited edition boxed set that has since gone out of production. Believe me, I’d buy it if I could find it for less than the outrageous prices that I see in the used market.
A lot of my music listening on Youtube is on a browser tab that gets hidden while I do something else, like read posts on Elektronauts, or cook my dinner.
I filmed almost all of my tracks and uploaded them to YouTube, spiced up a bit by naming the hardware in the title. People are much more likely to click on my videos and to leave a comment. But it’s pretty demanding as well because it adds another layer of frustration for me 
I stopped doing that and have much less views - and listeners of course. I personally don’t like Soundcloud because that platform’s crazy and I get almost zero listens on Bandcamp, so I prefer YouTube because at least some people will listen to my music…
And I’m also more inclined to click on a video with gear that’s interesting to me. But most music isn’t that good anyway… From the stuff I listen to on YouTube or Soundcloud, it’s just a tiny, tiny fraction that I actually like. I’m mostly listening to music on those platforms to see what other musicians are up to. For the rest, I’m using my music collection…
No.
I’m afraid it’s the supremacy of the visually oriented platforms yt, ig, tiktok etc catalyzing this.
I don’t watch music, I watch videos and listen to music. If they are happening at the same time, I’m cool with it. No biggie. No sweat off my back. No gopher in my hole.
You’d think a company like YouTube could make a better value proposition than “pay us for this app to not be annoying” but what can you do.
Personally I don’t particularly mind people showcasing their music on YouTube with the gear in shot, because I tend to think those kind of videos are YouTube at its best and it’s great that people spend their time doing that for my potential enjoyment.
Seems to me a happy medium would be YouTube allowing background playback but I don’t see that happening any time soon. Maybe we could encourage the synthtubers to mirror to Odysee?
It doesn’t eliminate the visual aspect but you can at least play it without watching.
I have a question for those that enjoy watching music gear videos vs listening to audio. Have you ever bought any music from the video creators that release songs as a video rather than just audio? If so, did it hold up compared to watching the video?