The Nerve Of This Guy!: Criticizing YouTube from the perspective of an Independent Creator

[circuitbored]

These days I find myself going down a rabbit hole of misdirection in finding information about people that post online these days... Whenever I see a post about a musician or other notable people, unless they're already popular, it's become quite hard to find a biography for them, or even a single place where I can see their body of work grouped together for quick preview...

For example, if you go on YouTube, it's relatively easy to find my music by searching for me by my artist name, but even if you find and follow me there, there's little chance that you'll see updates that I post thereafter, especially if you follow many other accounts on the platform. YouTube has Gazillions of videos, old & new, and they're often displayed based now on who pays most to promote their content, rather than based on what & who you choose to follow, so it's quite hard to stay on topic when you view a single artist.

It would be rather arrogant of anyone to say they want to dominate search results on YouTube when it has a gazillion other videos on the platform, but artists like Taylor Swift, Billie Eilish, Kanye West, Beyoncé, and select others (seemingly out of nowhere increasingly) do it all the time. If you were to fill a room with 1,000 people all wearing black outfits, and then insert 3 people wearing bright read outfits, naturally a lot of attention would go into figuring out why those 3 people were dressed in red by the people wearing black -- This is how modern social apps like YouTube work. They put the majority of their audience in black outfits, and then create a tiered system of non-black outfits that allow certain people to stand out more. A lot of the time, the methods of becoming more "visible" by obtaining a colorful outfit is based on money spent to obtain that outfit. The money spent is also based on timeframes, it usually doesn't last forever, unless you keep spending.

One of the major problems I have with YouTube is that organic video views are heavily limited. many now would say they are nonexistent. On the site, there are few ways for independent (non-major) musicians and creators to be discovered and bookmarked reliably. There are few ways to search for content based on topics or vibes, the system mostly relies on keywords, which can easily be gamed to not match actual content shown. Even the search auto complete pop-up on YouTube displays only completely unmatched options when you type my artist names into it, and I'm pretty sure it's happening for many other musicians like me. Almost every aspect of YouTubes navigation is designed to steer users away from our content once a user clicks a link to our music on the platform, which highlights the lack or real value of using the platform as a musician or creator.

All that being said, years ago, before buying platform ads came into play as a requirement, it's important to note that "paying for visibility" was not required of independent (not corporate sponsored major artists), and many artists and creators became wealthy and successful without needing huge up-front funding and marketing budgets... Many refer to that era as "The Golden Years" (well, at least I do). That era, prior to the rise of TikTok and Spotify, was so crucial to Independent musicians because it was far easier than now to be discovered by an audience of supporters without having to spend hundreds and thousands of dollars on promoting your work before you can even recoup a dime from it.

Many musicians I talk to even look back nostalgically at the piracy era (When SoulSeek and Napster were dominant) fondly, because it did so much to create audiences that attended artist shows, and it build up many new subgenres of music out of nowhere -- A process that seems almost insurmountable to new artists these days.

So with all this in conversation, it's important to note and debate how music is discovered now in this politically controlled and dynamic new Internet setting, where everyone needs to pay for how visible they can be. The unfortunate effect of our current entertainment environment across social apps and sites like YouTube, FaceBook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, etc. is that there is a very weak presence of Independent artists and musicians now --- So much so that even musicians with major funding are presenting themselves as if they are independent in order to cover for the lack of visibly "normal" (bedroom) musicians that are relatable to audiences that look specifically for underground and non-majorly funded.

As we hear stories about major music industry meltdowns, and stories about toxic and harmful initiation rituals within major industry for artists, I think it's important to preserve a space for independent music, as it's often one of the avenues for the best music (without major industry backing) to rise, and it also allows fresh new (non mainstream) ideas to rise in charts to inspire new music and entertainment trends as well.

While we also talk about paid ads on YouTube, we can also add the ideal that they charge users for an ad-free experience as well... This allows YouTube to profit directly from both artists and viewers on completely different angles, and for a services that are contradictory to compensating artists properly for their work posted to the platform. Ads are supposed to serve in increasing an artist's visibility somehow, but users are paying on the same platform, to get rid of ads... Confusing to say the least.

The premise of this post in a nutshell is that these days, I'm a "nobody" in music, and even in terms of notability of my words, unless I get millions of views on my YouTube videos and perhaps tens of thousands of views/likes on my social media posts... If I do get those numbers, people pay closer attention, but it doesn't guarantee in any way that I'm making a profit off of my work... This is very discouraging, especially when you consider the very high costs of just getting to that point of social and statistical notability in this current social ecosystem...

In order to have actual numbers to speak intuitively on, I ran an (unscientific study) ad campaign on YouTube for one of my videos just this month (October 2024) in which I put $100 on promoting a video that I uploaded prior that got only 10 views organically and never grew past that.

Of course the configuration of the campaign matters a lot in terms of overall success, but I didn't want to dive too deep into the nerdy rocket science of marketing configuration, so just as a general experiment I ran the campaign mostly based on a default setup as a video views campaign. Based on the outcome, I'd generalize that (if you don't pay more and hire an experienced marketing company) it takes about $100 right now to generate around 2,500 views and about 50-100 likes on the same video through an ad campaign on the platform... This means that in order to be consistently notable, based on a YouTube presence (1m views per uploaded video), one may be expected to spend around $40,000-$50,000 on ad boosting right now... PER VIDEO... Perhaps this highlights the prohibitive nature of how social apps work against artists that aren't signed to major labels that fund their marketing or born into super rich & connected families that can afford to burn money (and in most cases not make the investment back) on online ads.

I titled this post "The nerve of this guy" because it deals with tons of high level issues in technology... While I make music and run a label, I also work in modern tech, I've been doing both things for over 24 years because frankly, music isn't what primarily pays the bills (nor my ad budgets) for me. While I don't have a huge footprint online, there is also a designing place now that prevents me from further developing my foothold as a musician. I frequently leave posts languishing (now more than ever) without views or with low views -- Simply because I don't believe I should have to pay for people to be able to see work that I've shared on social apps. Some peers may see my opinions on the matter as unpopular, but I'd find holes in their criticism if we were to evaluate their ad expenses versus their returned value and view numbers as well, a I've found there is a lot of secrecy and/or clouded perception involved in the modern online social app world, as we learned with Crypto & NFTs, Which were all the rage for the last few years, but now considered as legendary scam nostalgia.

I run an independent music label, not an operation backed and funded by major music industry companies. When I do manage to accomplish big things, like landing my music work in commercials for major companies or in films, as I have at times, while still remaining independent, I'm pretty sure many ask who I am, and how I got there. The answer is often from my work that I've posted on YouTube... This is exactly why the platform becoming a "Pay for visibility" platform more and more worries me... The people I don't know that would love my work and want to partner with me rarely and increasingly never get a chance to discover it for free as a result. I'd rather remain a nobody to be honest though, instead of needing to drop $40k (or even $100 for that matter) on every video just to remain notable was the case... The nerve of this guy!

Moe @RUFFANDTUFF
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