When I started this website years ago, I called it a “labor of like.” I’ve always liked writing, and I’ve always loved guitars and music. I almost started a website about home recording or performing as a solo musician, but I’m not always recording, and I’m not always performing. I am always thinking about guitars, so it made the most sense. It was a good choice. The site is now doing more than paying for its own hosting costs and allowing me to buy strings twice a year. But it’s still not making big money, because it exists so that I can do whatever I want.
That doesn’t mean I don’t care what people think. But for any artist, it’s a balancing act. And writing is an art. I know what I like to write about. I know what people like to read about. It’s often not the same thing. Very few people are interested in this “YouTube Blog” series, but this is a topic diary for me – Anyone who wants to start a YouTube channel and read through the posts and see what I thought, which may or may not be helpful, but it’s more information.
When I look at the analytics for my YouTube videos, it’s very easy to see what people like and what they don’t like. People on YouTube have very, very little patience. That doesn’t bode well for longwinded old guys like me… or for music in general. 50% of the people who watch my videos don’t make it past Tony’s intro and the 10 second intro song. They don’t have 30 seconds to spare for my particular sense of humor. When I take out Tony’s intro, only 25% of people don’t make it past the intro song. If I took out the intro song, which would be an interesting experiment, I’d guess that the number would go down to like 10-15%.
One big piece of advice given to YouTubers is “Don’t have comedy intros and don’t have theme songs.” This is why. It’s not Tony’s fault – any comedy at the beginning turns off half the viewers. Anything off-topic turns off half the viewers. I could remove Tony and the intro theme song and I’d retain more viewers.
YouTube analytics tells you exactly when people leave your video, as well as which parts of your video are more watched than others. Musical artists can use these analytics to see which parts of their songs are better received, which parts of the songs cause people to leave, etc. Armed with this knowledge, they can then start writing songs that will retain people’s attention more. This type of instant feedback information has transformed popular music.
Is all of this good, bad, or just interesting?
In “The Sound of Muzak” by the band Porcupine Tree, written in 2002, Steven Wilson sang:
Soul gets squeezed out
Edges get blunt
Demographic
Gives what you want
One of the wonders of the world is going down
It’s going down I know
It’s one of the blunders of the world that no one cares
No one cares enough
Now it’s 2021 and we’ve got all kinds of data on the art that we make, and it’s informing what people do. Is it good or bad? All artists throughout history have had to think about “giving the people what they want.” The issue is that when you do give the people what they want, the popularity spikes but the things that make it unique are “squeezed out” and the “edges get blunt.” I think about Rush recording the album 2112. The record company told them to stop making longer songs with smart lyrics and go back to sounding like Led Zep, or they’d lose their contract. Rush responded by making an album about Big Brother telling musicians what to do (I mean, not really, but it could be read that way.) And the album took off.
There are middle roads. One video I made started with me talking, Tony saying two lines, theme song, into the video. The retention was a lot better. People don’t even listen to Tony. They see him as the first thing on the screen and they’re gone. Do I care? I really don’t know. I understand that my comedic timing is dull – I need to speed the entire show up, not just Tony’s lines. Even though I do a ton of edits to get rid of pauses, I still tend to go on and on. It’s who I am. Should I change myself to be more popular? Is YouTube high school? If it is, screw that.
But it’s hard to know that half the people watching won’t give the video a chance. And I need to get over that. I need to make what I want to make, and there are still 50% of the viewers who stick around. The theme song is something people don’t like, but it’s sending traffic to this site. The video where I compared my two PRS guitars has been almost six thousand times as I type this. The YouTube channel is sending more traffic to this site, which was part of what I hoped to achieve.
One more thing. Tony is something that does make my channel different than others. And some people think Tony is funny, including me. Tony is not something I will allow to be squeezed out or blunted, because I would rather make imperfect videos that express what I want to express rather than turn into one of the thousands of bland YouTube channels out there that don’t have any edges or soul. If I did this to put food on the table and pay bills, I would likely feel differently and I’d “sell out.” But I am, in my own way, making my own art, and expressing what I want to express.
The humor does need to be tightened up somewhat, though.
